Last week I told MDGx about the Undelete Plus file recovery tool from this site:
http://www.undelete-plus.com/

It's kinda like the old MS Undelete tool from the DOS 6.x days, except Undelete Plus can also work under FAT32 and NTFS volumes.

see if you guys can try out this tool and post your results in this thread.

This piece of sh*t crashed my system. Three BSODs after pressing "scan" button. Then returned to desktop and completely froze

No thanks, I'll keep my Recycle Bin.


(I had a bad feeling about this after seeing its size and the fact they seem to be more concerned with how it looks than how it functions...)

Exactly my thoughts. I tend to use a small app that requires NO installation, called Restoration:

Download: http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html

Freeware, works on all versions of Windows, FAT/FAT32/NTFS.

edit: and apparently, I had a very old version of it, as seen in the screenshot. Doesn't seem to matter, though, as the screenshot is showing deleted files on an NTFS partition that was formatted in Vista RC2.

Now that one works fine. Some files were seemingly undeleted, but their content is not. I suppose that's just because it was overwritten already and not because of a flaw in the program itself.

This is the best undelete program.

I agree i have it too regardless how out dated it is

I hope you guys have seen my list of free(ware) recovery tools:
http://www.mdgx.com/secrets.htm#FDPT
Scroll down for Restoration + Undelete Plus.

HTH

I just noticed that a few days ago, while looking for something else.

since we're on the subject of hard drives, recovery and whatnot... is there any backup utility that copies the disk structure (not just the files, I mean everything) into a file which can then later be used to restore a previous OS installation. In my case I want to backup my Windows XP hard drive right after I finish installing all of the updates and patches and drivers... That way, when I format my PC and install Windows XP again (which I know I'm going to do in the near future...) I won't have to go through the hassle of installing all of that stuff again... since it will already be installed.

Ghost.

any free solutions?

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

Many Linux liveCDs probably come with it too.

very nice. Exactly what I was looking for.

especially this: http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page which includes all of the files that I would need to do a full system restore

Works fine for me. What are newer versions for, anyway?
Thanks for the link to Restoration guys.

a new version of Undelete-Plus (2.2) has been released. the latest version should fix bugs/problems found in previous releases when running it on large HDs under WinME.

Undelete Plus ran okay on my WinXP machines but not on my WinME computer. it always display a "floating point division by zero" error after clicking on Scan when running Undelete Plus under ME. hopefully version 2.2 will work properly under ME.

I might give the Restoration app a try later this month

Here's another free disk imaging program... http://www.partition-saving.com/

not quite. Documentation of the Restoration program is LAME!!! no help file to go with RESTORATION is also appalling. Restoration did work ok on my WinME computer but it was a little slower than Undelete Plus. so "RESTORATION" is FAR from perfect and far from being the best undelete program, in my opinion.

the makers of RESTORATION should write a HLP or CHM file for their app. right now I do NOT recommend the RESTORATION app for novice Windows users.

still Undelete Plus (latest version 2.2) crashes under WinME when attempting to Scan C: drives but it works when checking other drives. so Undelete Plus also needs some major improvements to that app as well.

Why a help file? The use of the program is straight-forward, and most users don't read help files anyway.

Death to the CHM format! It's quite lame to have a help format that relies on IE, which in most cases has nothing to do with the application.

Restoration is better because it works on any Windows. Nah.

This is actually the old SavePart [Save Partition] renamed to Partition Saving [very cool tool, BTW].
Please note that the actual server is located at:
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/
- English [frames]:
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/en/index_frame.html
- English [no frames]:
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/en/index.html
- French [frames]:
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/fr/index_frame.html
- French [no frames]:
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/fr/index.html

partition-saving.com is only a fake redirector, not a real domain name, resolves to damien.guibouret.free.fr .

HTH

eh... It's the way that I found it so...

I was having a heck of a time trying to backup an NTFS partition with Windows XP to an NTFS partition with the SysRecCD... Apparantly Linux still doesn't have proper NTFS support... So I had to use an 8gb harddrive which I had lying around, reformat the thing in Fat32 and create the image file on that harddrive instead...

Is there any way for me to make images of my NTFS harddrive to another NTFS drive? With free software?

FORGET IT, BenoitRen! MANY software makers (like the makers of Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware SE and many more use CHM for help files. get used to it.

When I said about documentation for Restoration I meant the documentation mentioned at its web site. needs more improvement on that! But the Restoration app itself is very good.



NICE!

highly recommend using Partition Saving program to any Windows user

BTW - Undelete Plus app has been revised again, this time to version 2.3.

I installed Undelete Plus 2.3 under my WinME computer and it does finally work on large HDs under ME. finally they got it right! previous versions couldnt scan my HD under ME as it would always crash or generate error messages.

NEVER!

*clinges to the old but adequate Help format*

WAHAHAHA! GET OVER IT! It's reality, Benny BOY! Can you convince those software makers to NOT use the CHM Help file format? I like to see you try. Otherwise, admit defeat

CHM Help file format is here to stay

personally I too do like the ol' HLP help format which uses WinHelp and runs faster. too bad many software makers are using the CHM format to write Help files. that dont bother me!



have you looked at the Linux-NTFS project, StateS?
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/

Documentation for Partition Saving app posted here:
http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/en/documentation.html
now THIS is how it should be for documentation for an app

yeah... I've heard of it... (linux-ntfs) the problem is that I don't really have the time or patience to modify the sysresccd to include that package... I got around to backing up my HD anyway, it's just that I had to back it up to an extra drive I had lying around here... Kind of annoying that I have to switch drives just to backup another... oh well...

...
...

Just had a brain storm... SysRescCD has the freedos distro... does freedos include NTFS support? If it does than I can just make a boot disk or something with freedos and partition saving... I think...

FreeDOS doesn't have its own NTFS driver per se, but they recommend NTFS4DOS:
http://wiki.fdos.org/DOS/Ntfs4dos

NTFS4DOS is included with FreeDOS 1.0 distro:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/.../pkgs/ntfsx.zip
Documentation [empty ?]:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/.../pkgs/ntfsx.lsm
Source:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/.../pkgs/ntfss.zip

HTH

Ok I found a free solution for backing up your harddrives, and yes, you can backup NTFS partitions and write to NTFS partitions with this one. It's smaller than SysRescCD but in my opinion it is better. Here it is: http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html

Here is the command that I used to backup my partition:

boot: insert lang=en 2 (this will start the linux live cd in text mode and it will use an english keyboard)

mkdir /mnt/storage (create the directory storage in the directory /mnt)
fdisk -l (this will list all of the partitions that you have available)
ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /mnt/storage (this is how you mount the NTFS partition that you are going to write to)
partimage (this is the imaging program)
-I selected the partition that I wanted to backup (in this case the Windows XP partition)
-/mnt/storage/WinXPSP2 (this is what the image will be named, WinXPSP2, and it will be stored in the /mnt/storage directory)
-F5
-F5
-Gave the image a description
-F5

and voila, it started and finished correctly. no errors when writing to the ntfs drive, and no errors when reading from the NTFS drive that I was backing up in the first place.

then when the program finishes, just do

umount /mnt/storage
and then press ctrl + alt + del to shutdown the PC. This live CD is now officially my windows backup and restoration CD

Though this is increasingly going "out of topic", you might want to have a look at this thread here for freeware imaging solutions:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16534


jaclaz

ok let's get back on track with the topic. New version of Undelete Plus (version 2.4) released at their web site:
http://www.undelete-plus.com/

now available in more languages and has a faster scan than with version 2.3.

Undelete Plus version 2.5 now available. this new version now supports 800x600 screen resolution, has a Help file and adds Serbian and Greek languages.

Good thing many of us (BenoitRen, myself, etc.) are NOT going to touch Windows Vista or even upgrade to it. Windows Vista killed the HLP help format as WinHlp32.exe is no longer included there.
Read the article here of how Winhlp32.exe is not included in Vista:
http://bink.nu/Article9369.bink

Help files with the HLP extension are no longer accessible in Windows Vista.

Yep, most probably the guys at MS dropped support for .hlp files to reduce size of Vista installation....

jaclaz

Version 2.61 of Undelete Plus program now released:
http://www.undelete-plus.com/download.html

There's an update available to install the winhlp32.exe file. KB917607 for Vista adds support for the .hlp format.

the_guy