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Review: FreeUndelete 2.0 - the best free utility on the net?

by Bob Crabtree on 23 June 2006, 01:24

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Final thoughts, awards and links


Final thoughts, awards and links

FreeUndelete saved our bacon and, naturally, that's kind of prejudiced us in its favour. However, before sitting down to write this review, we carried out a whole bunch of tests to see if we'd just been lucky.

Our conclusion from those tests is that, yes, we had been lucky - lucky to find such a great little app when we needed it, and also discover that it's easy to download, easy to install, easy to use and available for absolutely no cost.

It's quite possible that there are better recovery apps. There may even be better free recovery apps, but we doubt it. What we don't doubt is that there are lots of recovery apps out there that don't work as well as FreeUndelete 2.0 and for which you'll be asked you to pay, perhaps quite a lot of money.

If you are confident that you'll never do anything as stupid as delete a file by accident (and if you think that, you must be stupid), then don't bother downloading this sub-1MB file and installing it on every PC you own.

And also don't bother copying the exe to the thumb-drive on which you keep all your must-take-with-me utils and programs.

But, if you reckon there's even the slightest chance of you, or someone else who accesses your PCs, making a horrible mistake, you absolutely should grab the program right now, install it and also put the exe someone where you can get at if you need to install it on another PC to carry out a recovery.

Just remember, though, to work within the guidelines that the writers of FreeUndelete provide and those we've given here. Then, you, too, will very likely be able to get out of jail free.

Got any thoughts on FreeUndelete or any questions (mind you, you could answer them yourself by downloading the titchy exe and trying the program for yourself)?

Or fancy putting forward your own candidate for Best Free Utility on the Internet? Well, join us, why don't you, over in the HEXUS.community?


HEXUS.award












HEXUS.links

HEXUS.community - discussion thread about this article
FreeUndelete - home page
Office.Recovery.com - home page

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HEXUS Forums :: 19 Comments

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Posted by DeMilo - Fri 23 Jun 2006 12:03
I wonder how long its been around? a few times i have searched for this type of app but have not found anything that doesn't look extremely dodgy or anything that wont cost me at least a red note. you certainly were very lucky!

I'll be installing this on all my machines when the weekend comes!

Zonelabs - Zonealarm. This free app provides a firewall, an application control, an Internet lock, and Zones and has always done me good. Norton Apps take up too much recourse so i tend to look for alternatives. its very simple to use and doesn't use much resourse at all.

it always asks for permissions to let certain programs through and you can change settings later if you wish with the very easy UI. You can set the internet block to deny traffic whilst your computer is un-attended to.

I dont have or need many cool apps but this is my proudest in my inventory :)

http://www.download.com/3000-2092-10039884.html if you would like to download it.
Also Zonelabs produce vaious other apps but these require payment http://www.zonelabs.com if you wanna know more.
Posted by Bob Crabtree - Fri 23 Jun 2006 12:26
DeMilo,

I really was shocked and delightfully surprised not just to google-up this free program but to find that it is so very good.

I really do have quite a lot of paid-apps that do this sort of thing but won't now spend any time looking for them, cos this FreeUndelete 2.0 is so very good.

As for how long it's been around - no idea.

As for ZoneAlarm - I don't mean to knock your nomination at all but my experience is rather different.

Like you, I used to swear by it.

But, as with a number of other apps (including WinZip, many years ago), it was one that I signed up for and paid a fee.

Unfortunately, although the Pro version did work well for a good while, as I recall, one particular point upgrade ended up causing me a huge amount of problems - no internet connectivity for days - and when I realised it was the cause, I pulled it and never installed it again.

Can't say that it's absence worries me, though, cos I have a Firewall on my router and also on XP itself.
Posted by Whiternoise - Fri 23 Jun 2006 13:14
Yeah, i'd second the worries about ZoneAlarm, kept causing STOP errors on my parents' laptop - our router firewall hasn't let anything serious through yet, although i'd recommend paying for a security suite tbh.

Hmm.. loads of great free apps (web browsers etc ;p). One that i found was amazing is PSPad. It's a code editor that supports just about ANY type of scripting language - php, C/++, pascal you name it, it's got it and you can download templates/extensions for the stuff it doesn't support. I found it a couple of days ago on Download.com looking for a php editor and this seems to do the trick. www.pspad.com or www.pspad.com/en. I haven't tried it extensively but it looks like a very good freeware editor :D

screenie:

Code Explorer

Spell Checker/FTP stuff

other awards: http://www.pspad.com/en/press.htm
Posted by DavidM - Fri 23 Jun 2006 13:47
Looks very useful (both programs!)!
Posted by FatalSaviour - Fri 23 Jun 2006 14:17
Great thread Bob….funnily enough it's already come in useful for me today! :)
Someone at work had deleted a file off a network share that he believed would go to the Recycle Bin…no such luck, but UD's got it back :)

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