File Saver is an easy to use file undelete utility.
If you’ve ever accidentally deleted a file and discovered to your horror that it isn’t in your recycle bin, this could be the answer to your problem.
If you find yourself in this situation, you need to run a file recovery program as soon as possible.
Do you need File Saver?
You may or may not know that when you delete a file, Windows “cheats” and doesn’t really delete it. Instead, it marks the space on your drive as being available for re-use.
Over time, this means that your hard drive gets messier and messier, but that’s another story.
The important thing to do if you need to recover a file from your hard drive is to get hold of a program such as File Saver as soon as possible. Ideally, you should download it to a different computer to reduce the risk of overwriting anything.
Once you’ve got the software, all you need to do is select the drive that contains the files you want to retrieve and click the “scan” button.
The process runs quickly – much quicker than searching for a file in Windows Explorer, for instance – and you get given a long list of files that you can recover together with a few details about them.
Probably the most important of these figures is the condition figure. Your ideal for this is 100% as it means the file should still be able to be retrieved completely.
When you select a file to restore, the File Saver software asks you where you want to restore it to. Ideally, this should be a different drive from the one containing the deleted file. A network drive is ideal for this.
If your machine isn’t on a network then a USB flash drive is another good alternative. I used one of these for my tests and it worked fine.
Another useful feature of the software is for any deleted images is the preview option – photos copied across from your camera tend to have pretty meaningless names, so it’s useful to be able to click the preview option before restoring an image.
If you’re in a hurry you can use the filter option to narrow down the list of files you’re looking for. This allows you to search for partial file names as well as selecting by date, file size and file attributes (for things like hidden files).
The software works on hard drives, floppy disks and camera memory cards.
Verdict
File Saver is simple to use and does exactly what it promises.
It is quick and simple, which is good news as (with any luck) you shouldn’t be using it too often and don’t want to be learning how to use it.
It’s also cheap to buy, so if you’re the cautious type then it’s not going to break the bank “just in case”.
But for us normal people, the most likely time you’ll need it is when you’ve just deleted an important file and need to recover it fast.