Review of Diskeeper Undelete 2009 - Recover Lost Images and Files

click to enlarge

The directory structure of your computer is duplicated in the Recovery Bin so all you have to do to find the file you want to recover is navigate to the directory where it was last stored. However, if you can’t remember that directory, there’s a nice search feature that allows you to search for the file either by name or by the date the file was either deleted or created.

click to enlarge

I tested this on several pictures, making multiple edits and saving each one with the same file name. When I checked in the Recovery Bin of Undelete 2009, the file was listed with all of its previous versions. I was able to view each one and select the ones I wanted to recover. Very cool feature!

This feature isn’t just related to photos, either. Although I was mostly interested in how this software would help with image management, I had to test this particular tool with some other types of files, too, just to see how it worked. I was especially interested in how it would handle Microsoft Office documents. The results were great all the way around, and I know this is something that I’ll definitely be using to recover older versions of Excel spreadsheets.

It took me a little bit of time to figure out how to recover files that were deleted directly from the camera with Undelete 2009. You have to make some adjustments to the Recovery Bin properties in order to access any removable drive, including cameras.

However, when I did finally figure it out, I was extremely impressed. Not only was I able to access files that I purposely deleted for test purposes, but Undelete 2009 found images on my camera that I had deleted four months ago. This was way before I even had the software installed.

For the most part, the user interface of Undelete 2009 is pretty intuitive and easy to use. There are a few things such as recovering files from removable drives that take a bit of time to figure out, but the internal help files that come packaged with the software are fairly comprehensive.

It may take a bit of playing around to become comfortable with all the tools available, but the basic ability of recovering files from the main hard drive is straightforward enough to be done with little to no knowledge right after installation.

Undelete 2009 Home Edition is competitively priced at $29.95. If it were simply a recovery tool, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay that much despite the fact that it makes the process of recovering deleted files much easier than other methods. However, since the software does quite a bit more than just reinstating deleted files, the product seems worth the price.

Undelete 2009 is not only great for the digital photography enthusiast, it’s also something which businesses should seriously consider adding to their arsenal of data protection tools (see the review in the Small Business Security channel for more info).