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What does the Undeleter do? 
The Undeleter enables you to restore files which are already deleted. If you erase a file (and don’t use a tool like File Wiper for that), it is just labeled as deleted by your operating system. It does still exist on your drive, but cannot be read without specialized software. These files are set to be overwritten, but still remain on your system until they are overwritten at some point. The Undeleter can find those lost files and offers the possibility to restore them.
Procedure The Undeleter is a part of the File Tools section. Once you’ve opened the Undeleter, a short introductory guide about this function appears. Below you are able to select a drive to be analyzed. This function enables you to select the drive (hard disk drive, flash drive etc.) which is tested for deleted files.
Selecting a drive The Undeleter offers list of drives found by scanning your system. If you decide to connect a new device (e.g. flash drive or external hard drive), click on “refresh drives” to refresh the list of drives. Once you’ve chosen a drive by clicking on it, it is highlighted and can be tested for deleted files. Then click Search.
Settings Click Settings to adjust the searching of files individually. Here the search can be accelerated and the results (which can consist of a great amount of files) are more clearly arranged. Using default settings Ashampoo WinOptimizer 9 displays all the files which were found without further a examination of the condition of the file. The option Don´t show files in which the majority of the data has been lost ignores all those files, which cannot be restored properly.
Do not list files with 0 bytes is a special part of this group that does not contain any data anymore. Hide file icons in the list (for increased speed) accelerates the search additionally, because the data types are not symbolized by a little icon in front a the file name hereafter. If you want to restore a whole folder, its internal structure will be rebuild, too. If you don’t need it, just enable Ignore folder structure during undelete and the data will be reconstructed just file by file.
View results Once you’ve decided to scan a drive for deleted files, a list of files appears which were found by Ashampoo WinOptimizer 9. The located files might be in a different state reaching from Good (easy to to be restored) to Lost (which can be restored in just a few parts or not at all). The status indicates the chance to regain the whole contents of the file. Files which are poor or even lost might have been partially overwritten by other activities of our computer (e.g. saving a file at the location of the deleted one).
Search results As the Undeleter often lists a huge number of files, it might be difficult to keep track of all results. For this reason there is the search field “Scan deleted files for:” where you can enter search terms (numbers, letter strings, words). Only search results that match these characteristics will be listed. In the example (see picture below) files with $R in the filename are searched and listed.
Restore If you want to restore a file, mark the checkbox in front of your choice and select the place (an Explorer opens!) where it should be reconstructed. Click on Restore to finish the process.
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