Computer Act!ve - UK (2022-04-27)

55

We have one reservation about Recuva,

though – it comes from the Piriform

stable of tools that also includes CCleaner.

Since buying Piriform in 2017, Avast has

annoyed many people by smuggling PUPs

into CCleaner, and constantly nagging users

to upgrade to paid-for tools.

To be fair, we didn’t see any such

messages while using Recuva, but if you

don’t want to take the chance we’d

suggest Undelete 360 (www.undelete360.

com) as an alternative. Again, click Yes

when asked if you’ll let it make changes

to your device, then click Search, and

click the box next to the drive containing

your lost files. This will probably be your

hard drive or SSD, but it can also search

plugged-in USB drives and memory cards.

Undelete 360 found more than 213,000

references to deleted files on our test

machine. Click the box beside any you

want to resurrect, then click Recover. We

had mixed results, so don’t expect to

recover everything, although like Recuva

it managed to bring back an episode of

The Archers that we’d deleted way back

in April 2009.

Diagnose a failing drive

If your hard drive has become unusably

slow, it might be too full and therefore

struggling to accommodate Windows’

temporary files. It may even be about to

fail completely. To diagnose the problem,

perform a full backup if you can, then

install CrystalDiskInfo on a USB stick:

click the ‘CrystalDiskInfo8_16_3.zip’ link

at the top of http://www.snipca.com/41525.

Once it’s downloaded, extract its

contents to your USB stick. Switch to your

USB stick, launch ‘DiskInfo64.exe’, then

click Yes when asked if you’re happy to

make changes to your device.

The most important section to check is

Health Status. Our screenshot above

shows that our drive is in ‘Good’ health^1.

If yours reports Caution or Bad, we’d

recommend urgently considering a

replacement. The table at the bottom

shows the results of our drive’s

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting

Technology (SMART). Again, our drive

appears to be in good health (as indicated

by all the blue circles^2 ) but, should

errors be highlighted here, it may help a

technician devise a fix or advise on a

sensible course of action.

Retrieve your passwords

We strongly recommend using a

password manager like Bitwarden to

generate passwords and store them

online. That way, they won’t be lost if

your drive corrupts. Visit http://www.snipca.

com/41528, click Personal, then click

Create Free Account. Next, install the

Bitwarden program and the appropriate

extension for your browser from http://www.

snipca.com/41529. Repeat this for all of

your computers so any password you

create, on any machine, will be added to

your Bitwarden vault.

Next, download Bitwarden Portable

from http://www.snipca.com/41530 and copy it

to your USB stick. Should you need to

recover a password in an emergency,

launch it from your stick and log in using

the email address and password you used

when creating your account.

Detect viruses

McAfee Stinger isn’t a replacement for

antivirus software, but it is a useful

supplementary tool. And because it

doesn’t need to be installed on your hard

drive, there’s less chance of it conflicting

with your main antivirus. Visit http://www.

snipca.com/41531 and click Download

Stinger. Save the file to your USB stick,

then launch it from there. Click ‘Scan’ at

the top left to search your computer for

malware. You’ll see below how many files

it has scanned (^1 in our screenshot left),

and how many threats it has found -

fortunately none on our machine^2.

Issue 630 • 27 April – 10 May 2022

McAfee Stinger
will tell you
how many files
it has scanned,
and how
many threats
detected

If your drive’s

health status is

anything other

than Good, it may

be time for a

replacement

1

2

1

2

Run Anything From A

USB STICK