Most undelete utilities are commercial products. Some of them are free, but usually only with limited functionality. If you want all the features, you have to pay for the full version. Restoration is a very simple undelete program for Windows. If you only have to restore files, every now and then, this tool should be sufficient.

You need an undelete utility, if the files to be restored are not in the Windows Recycle Bin anymore. Note that the capabilities of all undelete tools are limited. If the corresponding space on the hard disk has been already overwritten by other files, then the restoration will fail.

You might not be able to find the files at all or you if you can find them, you are not able to restore them completely. Sophisticated, commerical tools have more options for to these problematic cases. Restoration will only be of help, if the time passed since the deletion of the file is not too long. Check the restored files carefully, to see if they are really complete.

Restoration doesn’t have to be installed. Therefore, it works from a USB stick or a network share. The program comes with two DLLs which are only needed for Windows 95/98/Me.

Restoration has another feature which is a bit counterproductive to its primary purpose. It can prevent the restoration of deleted files. This is useful if you want to erase confidential data from your hard disk permanently. For this, the tool overwrites all vacant clusters first with random numbers and then with zeros.

This process takes quite a while. Be careful with this function, it might destroy data you still need. You should run chkdsk first, and then a backup, before using this feature of Restoration.