It often happens to delete some files and later realize that you needed them. Or, another situation may be to accidentally delete a folder and then strive to retrieve it. Thanks to the technology available today, you can recover the files you delete and are also wiped from Recycle Bin.

I for instance gave up the Recycle Bin safe net and every time I wipe a file from my computer, it is surely gone. And I, like most users, lost many files by accidentally shift-deleting them. However, I was still looking on the Internet for software that can assist me in recovering them fast and easy. At the time I was into such softwares, the best on the market were GetDataBack and Easy Recovery. The truth is that they were so expensive that I could only see if they can find the data (the trial period did not allow for full recovery of the files).

Fortunately, a series of freewares flooded the Internet and with great effort, I was able to find one software that could rise to the standards imposed by the two applications.

FDRLab Data Recovery Centre provides a price-free utility for recovering the data that you have just deleted. The software is Undelete Plus and its purpose is to scan the volumes of your computer and find the files that have been deleted and recover them.

The golden rule in retrieving deleting data is to avoid overwriting the drive the data was stored on. Everybody knows that the files and folders you delete from your hard disk are not really deleted and only their name is lost. The moment you write new files on the drive, overwriting takes place and only then the lost data is getting corrupted and harder to recover.

The same applies in the case of Undelete PLUS. When retrieving the data, try saving it on a different drive then the one you are recovering from.

The interface Undelete PLUS is geared up with is very nice and easy to handle. In the right panel, there is the Drives tree. The user can change the view to file types (MP3, PDF, RTF, RAR, ZIP, XML, PNG, etc.) or to folders. In the left, there will be displayed all the files Undelete PLUS was able to detect. For not hyping yourself up, the software will inform you of the state of the files it has detected. This way, you will know that if the status reads "Very Good" then there still is a chance of recovering that file. "Overwritten" status means that the respective file is either corrupted or cannot be recovered.

Additional information tell you about the size of the file, format, path, date of its creation and modification. The software is capable of recovering entire folders and preserve the structure, this way you can retrieve the files in the exact order they were stored (in the case of a directory with sub-folders).

During the testing, I was very impressed by the speed of the scan. Undelete PLUS moved very quickly on the 120GB surface of my HDD and hurried to display the lost files. There is a downside for this aspect as it is indicative that the detection is only superficial. Considering that the program is free, you should not expect too much. However, Undelete PLUS scored 9/10 recovery ratio during our testing.

The filter Undelete PLUS features allows the users to perform a search for certain files instead of scanning the entire volume. The effects of this type of scan are faster search and recovery of the file (provided the file has not been overwritten). The options available in the Filter box include providing the application with the entire or part of the name of the file you want to recover, as well as the modification date interval and the size range. Once you set the filter, the scan will take into consideration only these settings and look for your file.


The Good

Undelete PLUS is very easy to use and the multilingual support ensures its use by an increased number of users. It is even equipped with the Romanian language pack.

The scan is made very fast and our test revealed a 9/10 recovery ratio (file number ten was not recovered because the free space on the testing drive has been securely wiped with a 2 pass method; however, the file name was correct as well as the size).

The Bad

Undelete PLUS is free and works like a charm. One problem though: the status of the files to be recovered is sometimes erroneous.

The Truth

Try it, it is free and it won't even take too much space on your hard disk.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: