We all know that backing up our data is essential. Data backup usually it isn’t something we have to worry about; centralized backup is found even in small companies, and if the backup policy doesn’t protect all of our files we do manual backups. So in theory there shouldn’t be a market for applications that recover deleted files. But we also know that backups can be out of date or the backup process could have failed completely.

Many applications exist that try to recover deleted files in these situations. Most professional recovery software is pretty pricey, though—it’s almost as if their producers want to make some extra bucks from your misery. If you ever find yourself in the unpleasant situation where you lost some files and don’t have an up-to-date backup, you might not care much about the price to get these files back. However, powerful recovery tools are available for free. One of them is NTFS Undelete. As the name implies it can recover deleted files from NTFS formatted drives.

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Submitted by Dennis Smith – Blog: Gourami

Farm Commander looks a lot like Norton Commander and ‘Total Commander, but the functionality is very different. With Total Commander both the left and right panel are file systems. With Farm Commander the left panel displays file system, where you can select files and directories. In the right panel are the Windows 2000/XP/Citrix/Terminal/Domain workstations/servers listed. First you have to select the files in the left panel, and then the servers in the right panel. Next you have to choose an action, such as copy, move or delete. Farm Commander then copies/deletes/moves the selected files to or from the selected server. In particular in Citrix/Terminal Server environments you often have to copy files at once. Farm Commander also features detailed reports. As administrator you should know whether some of the actions failed.

Farm Commander

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Submitted by Yehuda Cohen – Blog: http://yehudac.blogspot.com/

Do you know how many SQL Server or SQL Server Express servers are installed in your organization? Your most likely Answer is NO. Many server applications require a database system and install Microsoft’s free SQL Server Express. Sometimes the SQL Server Express installation is still running on the server even though you already removed the corresponding application. In the course of time, more and more SQL Server Express installations pile up in your network.

If you consider this as a problem, then SQLSearcher 1.0 is for you. The simple user interface allows you to search in your network for SQL Server installations. You can either load a list of server names from a file or scan an IP range.

SQLSearcher

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A while back, I discussed a few freeware tools that allow you to edit file types in Windows more conveniently than with the built-in Windows tools. Commenters brought another tool to my attention, NirSoft FileTypesMan, which is certainly worthy of a short review. This portable utility has all the essential features and is easy to use.

FileTypesMan displays all file types in a table with columns that show all relevant parameters. You can sort the table according to each column, which makes it easy to locate file types, MIME types, extensions, etc. The tool also has a search function.

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Q-Dir is a free powerful File Manager suitable for all Windows versions. Did you ever wonder why Microsoft is quite conservative when it comes to adding new features to the Windows tool that is used most often? The answer is simple. The majority of Windows users are not IT pros and they would only be confused by too many Explorer features. Q-Dir is one of these Explorer alternatives that has too many bells and whistles for the average user, but many of its features are quite useful for administrators.

The info on Q-Dir’s website is a bit sparse and you will only understand how its many functions work if you try the tool yourself. What follows now is a list of Q-Dir’s most important features, with a short explanation.

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Attribute Changer is a freeware tool that allows you to set file attributes on multiple files and folders, recursively. In addition, you can configure attributes that can’t be set with Windows Explorer such as the Archive attribute or the date and time when the file was created.

A typical usage example is forcing backup software to add a directory and its subfolders to the next incremental backup by activating the Archive attribute on all files. Attribute Changer can be helpful in countless other scenarios as well, such as when you have to modify time-based attributes (created, modified, accessed). You can also make it seem as if all files have been created on a future date—a quite useful feature if you are a hacker. In addition, Attribute Changer supports relative time adjustments.

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Windows XP had a nice file types editor (in Windows Explorer, Tools->Folder Options) that allows you to change the associations of file extensions with applications. In Vista, the File Types tab in the folder options was replaced with the File Associations applet in the Control Panel (Programs->Default Programs-> Associate a file type or protocol with a program). Unfortunately, the functionality of this applet is somewhat limited compared to its XP counterpart. For example, you can’t change the behavior of the edit or play context menu points in Windows Explorer. I hoped that in Windows 7, the more powerful XP file types editor would be revived, but I was disappointed.

Some tools that allow you to edit file type associations without messing with the Registry are available, but ASHociation is the only one I found that I liked and is for free. Actually, the full version costs 14.95 US dollars. However, the only difference is that the free edition displays a reminder for seven seconds before the tool starts. I think, this is acceptable, considering that you only need such a tool every now and then.

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I wonder why you guys never added Gizmo Central to the 4sysops list of free admin tools. When Andrzej mentioned the program in a comment, I was somewhat surprised that I had never heard of it, especially because I searched for a tool that can mount VHDs (Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk) reliably not so long ago. Now that that you can attach VHDs in Windows 7, it is not that urgent anymore, but Gizmo Central is still a very valuable tool because it comes with quite a few interesting functions.

• I have stolen the feature list from Gizmo Central’s website:
• Mount ISO, BIN, CUE, NRG files to a virtual CD-ROM drive
• Mount VHD files, used with Microsoft Virtual PC
• Mount password protected images to a virtual hard drive
• Encrypt HD images using a passphrase
• Protect vital files from hackers using encrypted HD images
• Mount IMG files to a virtual drive
• Mount and unmount files from the Windows Shell
• Mount and unmount files from the command line
• Support for compression and sparse HD images
• The writer of this feature list was a bit too modest because Gizmo Central can do more:
• Create ISOs (from disk or folder)
• Burn ISOs or folders to disk
• Create VHDs
• Calculate hash values for files, folders, and drives
• Edit source code

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Unstoppable Copier is a small, free utility that allows you to recover physically corrupt files from a disk that has bad sectors or scratches. Other file copy programs usually just abort or even delete corrupted files, but Unstoppable Copier restores what is left of the damaged files.

You can copy entire directories or, using wildcards (*,?), particular files in a directory. You can also use the tool’s batch mode to configure multiple source and destination folders to copy their contents in one go. You can save this configuration so that the next time you have to perform the same copy operation you can do so with only a few mouse clicks. (This function is also useful for undamaged disks.)

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IZArc claims to be “the best freeware ZIP utility” available. And indeed it is one of the most versatile ZIP applications out there. A screenshot of the application’s window doesn’t reveal anything spectacular but it’s nice to see the GUI without the need of installing the program. So I’ve included one.

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Submitted by Howard Jares

Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Feature list:

• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• Auto-completion
• Multi-Document
• Multi-View
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
• Dynamic position of Views
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Bookmark
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
• Macro recording and playback

Notepad++

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The Windows Explorer is a comfortable tool with which to manage your files. Although it lacks some features, most users would rather live without those features than install a third-party file manager. One way to improve the functionality of Windows Explorer is to enhance the context menu. This has already been achieved by many applications, but Microsoft has yet to come up with an easy way for the average user.

The program FileMenu Tools fills this gap. It creates a new item in the Context Menu of Explorer and opens up various possibilities for customizing it. If you choose the item FileMenu Tools Configuration in the Context Menu of the tool, a GUI will pop up where you can comfortably make your personal adjustments.

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It appears that I’ve never reviewed an undelete tool on 4sysops. I will make up for this omission today. Piriform’s Recuva is a free and easy-to-use file recovery utility. It has to be installed, but if you then copy its executable (Recuva.exe) from its Program Folder to another computer, it will work there without problems. It therefore qualifies as a standalone tool. I think, every admin needs such a tool on a USB stick. How often does it happen that a user tells you an extremely important document has disappeared in mysterious ways and can’t even be found in the Windows Recycle Bin?

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Every once in a while you need to repartition your hard drive; the tools shipped with Windows are sufficient for most of these occasions. Sometimes, however, even Diskpart lacks important features — especially if you have to deal with mixed partition types. Moreover, although there is specialized software for Windows, it is usually not free.

There are various partition tools for Linux. One of these is GParted. If you think that GParted is only capable of dealing with Linux file systems, you may be surprised to read that every option that it offers is also available for NTFS. GParted can detect, read, create, grow, shrink, move, copy, check and label almost every file system. The screenshot below gives you an overview of all supported file systems and functions.

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I think it is a good time to post an article about a free hash/checksum calculator tool because so many impatient IT pros have to compute the checksum of Windows 7 RTM now. There are many such tools out there, but HashCalc is probably the most comprehensive free hash sum computation utility. It supports 13 popular hash and checksum algorithms: MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2( 256, 384, 512), RIPEMD-160, PANAMA, TIGER, ADLER32, CRC32, and HMAC. Crypto purists probably will say that HMAC is not really a hash function though.

The download page doesn’t mention Vista as supported OS, but it works fine also on Vista x64. HashCalc calculates checksums of files, text strings and hex strings. SlavaSoft, HashCalc’s publisher, claims you can compute the hashes of files sizes up to 15GB.

I tested HashCalc 2.02.

HashCalc

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