The Recycle Bin is a handy first line of defence against accidental file deletions, but it's not perfect. There are many situations where you can delete something and not have it show up in the bin later, which is why it's vital that you have a file recovery tool installed. And not just any random piece of undeleting freeware, either: only a professional solution like iolo Search and Recover will do.

It's always a very bad idea to carry on working with a drive that contains important deleted material, for instance, in case you overwrite them. Most undelete programs just warn you about this. Search and Recover also provides the ability to make an image of the drive, freezing its state at that point and ensuring you'll lose no more data. The program can compress this image to save space, then mount it in Explorer as a virtual drive and scan it for your lost files.

Search and Recover is more intelligent than most of the competition, for example recognising that files like TemporyJunk.tmp, stored in the \Temp folder, probably won't interest you. Sensible (though optional) filtering of results reduces all the usual clutter and means you see only the most important data.

The program can also scan hard drive sectors to recover damaged partitions or other files whose index data has been lost. It has specific scans for pictures and movies or sounds and sounds that can play previews of files before you undelete them. And an email undelete tool can recover messages deleted from Outlook (97 or later), Outlook Express (5 or later), Thunderbird (1.5 or later) and more, a surprising but very welcome bonus.

Note that Incisive Media and vnunet.com are authorised distributors of this full commercial download. This is not freeware. Do not host or distribute this software or mirror this promotion.

SERIAL CODE

Point your browser at www.iolo.com/casr to get your serial code.

UPGRADE OFFER - save 50% across the iolo product range

Your copy of iolo Search and Recover will expire 12 months after installation, but that's easily fixed. Click Options > Extend this Subscription and you can purchase another 12 month licence for only around £10. If you're looking to save money in the meantime, though, just check the iolo registration email for a special 50% discount deal on any iolo product: the rather superb PC maintenance toolkit System Mechanic, their System Shield security suite, powerful stand-alone firewall and more. Visit www.iolo.com to see what's on offer, and use the Loyal Customer Coupon Code in your registration email to qualify for the 50% discount.