Backups are important when wiping out a PC
I very nearly shot myself in the foot big-time today. I have been trying for 2 days to get XP Media Center Edition installed on my home PC, the old desktop that we only use for web browsing. I figured that since I was expecting to get my Xbox 360 any day now, and I wanted to be able to use it to read my MP3 collection and photos from my home network, I could prepare the network by pre-installing Media Center.
My PC has 3 disk drives - two 120Gb drives and a 20Gb drive. The previous install used one of the 120 Gb drives as the main system drive. I was just planning on doing this again, but after the first try failed to erase the system drive (because I copied the setup files to that drive) I had to chose the 20Gb drive. I couldn't use the other 120Gb drive b/c that's where all my backups were. Or so I thought. Apparently through a comedy of drag and drop errors I put the backup of My Documents on the 20Gb drive, where it promptly got erased. Since my 20Gb drive is in use as the system drive, I thought I'd wipe out all traces of the old system and get back my 120 gigs. I couldn't format the disk for some reason (a file is apparently still in use b/c my user names are the same from the old install and the new install) so I manually erased every file on the disk. I didn't even realize I hadn't actually backed up the important files.
So about 20 minutes ago Kim asks me if she can use the PC to edit our wedding guest list. What!?! There was actually an important file on the machine. I totally just killed myself. When I told Kim that I'd erased it, she told me with tears in her eyes that it was the only copy and that rebuilding it was going to be out of the question. Of course, I told her not to freak out, I knew just what to do.
Google...."recover erased files"
MindSoft Utilities XP 9 for Windows XP to the rescue! This suite of utilities includes an Undelete tool that scanned the entire drive and let me restore the file perfectly. The day was saved and I looked like a big hero. Because it saved my neck, I will heartily endorse MindSoft Utilities, especially the Undelete tool. It was very easy to use, with a great search tool that was able to search through 90Gb of deleted files to find exactly what I needed to restore. The best part is that not only is it certified spyware and adware free by www.softpedia.com, there is also a FREE trial version.
-- Matt Ranlett