I’ve been meaning to create a personal backup strategy for important data for quite some time. My wife and I have over 100GB of home video, pictures, and other important files – I’m talking about virtually every picture and video of us since we met, and of our son since he was born 7 months ago. A hard drive failure could have caused us to lose everything, so I really should have done this a long time ago. Well, this past weekend I was determined to get it done. I bought a new Windows Home Server a few weeks ago and have about 3 TB of storage, so more than enough my backup needs. But before setting up the new super-awesome backup strategy I had planned I wanted to rebuild my PC so I could start fresh. I know what you’re thinking, what do file backups have to do with a new OS install? And the answer is: nothing at all, but my PC was due for an overhaul so it felt like the right time. Wrong.

So I copied all my files to an external disk, reformatted the PC drives and reloaded the OS. After the installation was complete I copied all files back over. Unfortunately, Vista decided to blue screen on me during an update and I never could get her to boot up again. Frustrated, I started the process over, wiping the drives clean and reinstalling everything. It wasn’t until I went to re-copy my files from the external drive that I realized the first time I had selected move instead of copy. I could literally feel the dread as it crept up my spine, and a terrible sinking feeling as my heart fell into my stomach. Everything was gone.

How could I be so incredibly stupid!? I should know better than to let something like this happen to me and I should be ashamed of myself! Well, suffice it to say I was quite upset and dreading breaking the news to the wife.

The I remembered: wait a sec, those files aren’t gone, they’re just marked for deletion. And since I hadn’t copied anything new to the external drive, they were probably still all there. So I ran to Google as quick as my fingers could get me there started searching for the best un-delete software available. I read a great review on CNET about a product called Undelete Plus. To make a long story short, I downloaded the free version and had 100% of my files recovered by the next day. So thank you, Undelete developers, for saving my family from the lost memories (and me from a very upset wife)! I’m heading over to your site to buy the full version, because $24.95 is a great deal for what you did for me!