Is there a PD undelete program?

[Don Ward]

We have users who make life difficult for themselves by

a)	believing that back-ups are a giant waste of their time
b)	occasionally deleting things by mistake

One particularly talented individual lost about three weeks work recently
by a careful choice of when not to back his files up and when to remove
them.

My own opinion is that these users should give up (a) or (b) and,
providing they also believe that the hardware never fails, I don't mind
which.

However, after giving the standard "tough-titty" response to the "how can
I get my files back?" question, I was prompted to ask this group if there
is any PD software which attempts to do at least some of the recovery job.
I'm aware of the difficulties which arise, especially on a multi user
machine. But on a single user workstation with private disks, something
might be possible if action is taken early enough (ie. immediately
afterwards).

I've considered telling them that they *may* be in better shape (if they
realise the mistake just after the button has been pressed) if they just
halt the machine, reboot and let fsck have it's way. The assumption being
that they might have got lucky and the undesired modifications have not
yet been flushed to disk.  I haven't suggested this and don't feel
inclined to experiment with my file system to see if it holds up in
practice. What do other people think?

Don Ward
Systems Design Division
GEC Electrical Projects Ltd             Email: Don_Ward at gec-epl.co.uk
Boughton Road, Rugby, CV21 1BU UK.      Tel:   (+44 788  or 0788) 542144