Best tool for undelete?

[kilowatt]

Hello friends,

My Dad just deleted a very important file off his computer (Leopard, ppc, HFS+).

What is the best program to use for undelete? A quick search with google or macupdate reveals several programs. Impulsively, he already purchased one (" Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery 4.0"). He let it run, "searching" for deleted files for two hours and the program claimed to be only 10% done (although it did return several results in this time period, the file he was looking for had not pop'd up yet).

Is there a better option, or a program you have had good success with? I initially recommended Disk Warrior to him (one of my favorite programs), but then I realized this program just does data recovery from damaged drives, and not "undelete" from healthy drives.

Much thanks,

--E

 

[SGilbert]

IMHO: Data Rescue II or TechTool Pro, however, you'll need to run from an external as installing now will potentially overwrite what you need to save.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I second the suggestion of Data Rescue II.

He let it run, "searching" for deleted files for two hours and the program claimed to be only 10% done

No data recovery program is going to be "quick." Typically, you'll need to let the program scan your hard drive overnight -- possibly longer. I've seen a data recovery program take 30 hours to scan a 250GB hard drive for a single file. The issue here is that the data recovery program basically has to reconstruct the file/folder structure of the erased data on the disk -- block by block, bit by bit. This is an excruciatingly long and painstaking process -- but worth it, depending on the importance of recovering said file.

 

[fryke]

Data Rescue II is my favourite as well. And yes, it _can_ take lotsa hours.