On 31 Jul 2005 at 15:10, Miriam Glickman wrote:

> Perhaps this is really dumb question but can you please explain what you
> said:
>
> "(You know, of course, not to install ANYTHING, including the uninstall
> utility, to the volume where the deleted files are, right?)"
>
> Thanks,
> Miriam

  When you delete a file, the directory entry goes away but the file data is
still sitting out in sectors on the drive.  An undelete utility is able to
find those sectors and rebuild the directory entry to point to them.

  But until that happens, the OS thinks those sectors are fair game for
anything new that it needs to write to the drive.  If it decides to use
those sectors for something else, you will NOT be able to ever undelete the
files that were there.

  So:  If you need to download or install something before undeleting, such
as the undelete utility, it's safest to install it to a different volume
(drive or partition) to avoid the risk that you will, in the process, make
the utility moot.

David Gillett

  (Also don't defragment the drive, etc.  I know that some FAT Windows
versions were nice about not re-using old sectors if there were virgin
sectors available, but (a) there might not be virgin sectors available, and
(b) I wouldn't assume NTFS does this.)

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