best undelete utility ?

[RTFM]

[John Rumm]

Their logo ought to give you another hint ;-)

Generally they seem pretty good.

[F Murtz]

I put "freeware" in the search

[Jim Hawkins]

Thanks, John. I've just downloaded the free version of Recuva. It's brilliant !

[Lobster]

On 17 Mar 2014, RTFM grunted:

Thanks very much for that... that link's not actually for my model, but put me on the right track and I did indeed find a Recycle Bin option buried in the configuration pages.

It's very 'clunky' - it simply creates a new top-level folder called "Recycle Bin" which now sits there parallel with "Music", "Data" and "Video"; and now when you delete something within this share it gets moved to this folder. Can't configure it in any way; can't 'empty' it; you just have to open it like any other folder and delete any files and folders inside. But def worth having, anyway.

[Lobster]

On 17 Mar 2014, RTFM grunted:

Thanks very much for that... that link's not actually for my model, but put me on the right track and I did indeed find a Recycle Bin option buried in the configuration pages.

It's very 'clunky' - it simply creates a new top-level folder called "Recycle Bin" which now sits there parallel with "Music", "Data" and "Video"; and now when you delete something within this share it gets moved to this folder. Can't configure it in any way; can't 'empty' it; you just have to open it like any other folder and delete any files and folders inside. But def worth having, anyway.

[John Rumm]

You can enable a recycle bin for the share in the NAS web control page...

[Johny B Good]

ISTR, that this was an option when I was originally setting up the FreeNAS server (NAS4Free now) and checked it still was when it came up in the thread a few days ago (it's an option under the 'shares' tab in the samba settings page BTW).

I didn't set this option since I rarely 'just delete' a file, except by accident now and again, electing to use shift delete to really delete the file(s)/ folder(s) in question, by-passing the move to the recycle bin.

If I suffer a "Premature Deletion" moment with files on the local disk, I can still use HandyRecovery to undo my carelessness but, of course, if this happens with a file stored on the NAS, it becomes a case of: "When it's gone, it's gone" (to paraphrase Aldi, so to speak).

Now, I'm considering whether or not to enable this feature but after some 6 or 7 years, I can't recall any memorable 'PD' disasters with NAS stored files (that's not to say there wasn't the odd 'minor' 'PD' incident during all that time).

On balance, I suppose I should enable the recycle bin feature on all the samba shares just to guard against a serious 'PD' event being committed in the future (I'm not getting any younger so it might be only prudent to make this change).

Since I've _never_ enabled the recycle bin on the NAS shares, I've no idea how well it might be 'integrated' into the windows recycle bin feature. I'm not at all bothered that it might simply appear as a recycle folder that looks no different to any other folder as far as windows is concerned.

The important thing is that the NOS knows to automatically move objects marked for deletion into that folder instead of the default of a normal deletion. If it's simply left for the user to work out where to restore files to from the recycle bin folder, I'm sure I'll be able to remember/figure it out without too much difficulty.

I've decided to enable the recycle bin, if only to satisfy my curiousity. I can report back if anyone else is interested.

[John Rumm]

With the ReadyNAS boxes it seems to just create a separate top level folder in the share...

[John Rumm]

What, no tape? ;-))

[dennis]

My dds 4 drive is dead and I don't think the QIC150 would cut the mustard. 8-(

I have just got access to a usb bluray writer so I may dump some pictures and scans to that ( only about 8 disks to do the photos).

[Johny B Good]

Well, I've had a chance to enable the 'recycle bin' feature on all four disk volumes. When I looked at the mapped shares, I couldn't see any sign of an additional 'recycle' folder anywhere but taking a guess that they'd only be created by the first deletion, I copied a test file onto all 4 disk volumes and deleted them. Sure enough, the disk volumes were suddenly endowed with a hidden system folder called ".recycle" within which was a folder called ftp within which lay my 'deleted' file.

The big snag for someone used to the windows recycle bin wasn't the fact that it lacked the features of the windows version so much as an issue of permission settings which prevented moving the file out of the folder and back into the general population (not necessarily the folder it had originally been deleted from). It was, however, possible to _copy_ it back to wherever but this then left you with an undeletable duplicate in the /.recycle/ftp folder path.

I logged into the webmin interface and from there into quixplorer from where I could change the file attributes on the ftp folder to all

7s after which it became possible for guest logged in users to move their recently deleted files.

I used to care greatly about setting users' access rights until I was forced to ditch NW3.12 just over a decade back in favour of a debian based server when it all seemed an unncessary 'luxury' due to my two youngest 'users' having reached their early twenties by then.

Still, the default settings on permissions weren't unexpected but I don't need the hassle of logging into the server as root just to restore or delete stuff in the/.recycle/ftp folder. The only _real_ annoyance is that I can't bypass the recycle bin by using shift delete any more.

All deletions now go to the recycle bin regardless. I suppose this change of behaviour makes good common sense since it'll protect me against my own cavalier attitude of deleting stuff 'With Prejudice' without a moment's hesitation. I'll leave the 'recycle bin' option set for the moment just to see whether it it'll become the nuisance it seems at first sight to be.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

If you delete (from one volume) several files with the same leafname, do they get kept separately in .recycle or does the most recently-deleted one overwrite the previous ones?

[ankit sajwan]

You can download and compare different data recovery software from here

[Johny B Good]

That's an interesting question. I didn't think to experiment on this aspect of the workings of the /.recycle folder. I'll give it a go...

When I did the first test, I'd copied the test file into the root of the share which, when deleted, simply showed up in the ftp folder.

Having made a second copy into a folder on the share, I can see that the whole file path is preserved for that copy which solves the duplicate leaf name issue.

As a matter of fact, the first time I deleted the root copy (after deleting the one in a folder), it looked as though it hadn't moved the file to the recycle folder. This turned out to be my forgetting to 'refresh' the folder view properly. By the time I'd made a second copy to the root and tried deleting that, I saw the first file _and_ the second file prepended with "Copy #1 of ".

As a recycle bin folder, it does seem to function as such despite it not offering any menu options that you see in the windows version. However, there seems to be a permissions problem with the additional folder path for the file I deleted from a folder since it won't allow me to move the file to anywhere let alone the folder it came from.

I'll have to sort out the inherited permissions for this use case before I can declare it a fully functioning recycle bin. This is beginning to look more complicate than I first thought. :-(

I'll report back later on this.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Good! What about if you delete a file, then create another with the same name (with the same or different contents - I wonder if that matters?), and delete it? Does .recycle keep the same name, same path variants apart?

[John Williamson]

When you send a file to the recycle bin, it is renamed and moved to the recycle bin folder by altering the NTFS or FAT data referring to it. The recycle bin display you see on the desktop is a folder of links to the recycle bin folder containing the original path and name of the file, so if you delete a file and then create a new one with the same name and path, there are two versions of the file on the HD, but they have different names and path properties.

If I remember rightly, when you then try to restore the original, it is restored to its original apparent place by the OS changing the name and path back to the original values, but with (1) appended or "Copy of" added to the file name. The OS also shows a message alerting you to the fact that there are now two accessible copies on the HD.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

We're not discussing Windows' Recycle Bin, but a different facility offered by a NAS's firmware.

[Johny B Good]

I did just that, by accident. I'd already mentioned it but it may not have been all that obvious.

I copied a file into the root of the share and a second copy into a folder on the same share. I then deleted the one in the folder which duly created a copy of the folder path within the ftp folder with the deleted file moved into that folder path.

When I then deleted the copy in the root, I failed to see it appear because I cocked up refreshing the fileview in the ftp folder. I ccopied the file again to the root and then deleted it and the 'same thing happened', no sign of it appearing in the ftp folder. It was only when I correctly refreshed the view of the ftp folder that I saw the original plus the second one now renamed with 'copy of ' prepended to the filename.

So it can cope with successive deletions of files of the same name from any given folder. I haven't tested the scenario going the other way but I suppose the renaming of the duplicates in the recycle bin folders automatically takes care of that.

The only problem is that folder paths copied into the recycle bin appear to default to 700 on the permissions. I'm not sure what the best way would be to handle that from a guest login point of view. I don't want the guest having to resort to copying deleted files back to their original (or an alternative) location if I can possibly help it.

As it stands, only a login into the webmin as administrator can properly deal with restoring files or empty out the recycle folder. It's an extra complication I'd rather not have to deal with.

I might just post a query on this to the NAS4Free forum if I can remember my login details. :-( If I'm lucky, I might be able to find an existing discussion thread where a solution might already exist without having to login.