by Steve Lussing

Created on: February 23, 2008

Lost file recovery has been traditionally one of the most useful functions of the operating system. In the old days of DOS (Disk Operating System) before Windows, commands were executed from the command prompt - usually designated as C:\>, following the system whereby the floppy and hard disk drives in the computer were designated alphabetically. For example, a computer with dual floppy disk drives and with one hard disk drive would contain drives A, B, and C, with C being the hard disk drive designation. The hard disk almost always contained the operating system boot sector therefore the command prompt would be designated C:\

>, or B:\> if the computer had only one floppy disk drive and one hard disk (provided that the internal jumper settings were correct for this configuration). The very important command C:\>UNDELETE filename.ext would recover any accidentally deleted file with the name filename.ext. This was possible because when a file was "deleted" it was not actually physically removed from the computer's drive, it was merely tagged, or marked in the file allocation table and any attempt to display a directory (or folder) listing of the files contained therein would simply ignore any tagged filenames so that the ones that were "deleted" were effectively gone - or appeared to be.

Today, the same procedure is employed by the operating system but simplified for the user, with deleted files sent to a "recycling bin" which is found on the desktop and which offers the option to selectively restore deleted files from a file list. In the event that the recycling bin has been emptied - another user selectable option which reclaims disk space - file recovery is made somewhat more complicated, largely because of all the features and enhancements which have been added to the operating system over its history and which tend to obfuscate the user's full appreciation of all that it has to offer. Using Windows "Help" from the start menu and searching for "undelete" or "system restore" will guide the user to the steps that should be taken to recover accidentally deleted files or to restore system conditions from a previously remembered state. This is a complex feature the user would do well to give some attention to but to describe it fully is beyond the scope of the purpose of this discussion. Where "lost" files are concerned, a more interesting and possibly more useful option for the user is to access any of the reputable file download sites and search for a free file

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