We have all made the mistake of throwing a file away, only to realize that it was not the file we wanted to throw away. Once the realization sets in that we did not have a backup copy of the file, we are faced with the horror of trying to recreate the document. However, there is some hope. With the help of Norton UnErase, recovering at least part, if not all, of the file becomes possible.

Note

If you are running UnErase in Mac OS X, please read the document How to UnErase files in Mac OS X.

 

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		If Norton Utilities is already installed, and FileSaver was active when the files were lost
		1 Open Norton Utilities, then click UnErase. 2 Select the disk the files were on.   3 Click the Quick Search button. Quick Search is the default search method and uses the FileSaver files as the primary means to list deleted files.   Note You can bypass the default search by pressing Command+B. This will bring up the Customized Search window. 4 Once the Scan is done, select the files you wish to UnErase. Use the Shift key to select multiple, contiguous files. Use the Command key to select multiple, non-contiguous files.   5 Click Recover. 6 Choose a location and click Recover in the Recovery Destination window. Norton Utilities will place the recovered files in a Recovered Files folder on the chosen location.   It is important to recover files to a drive other than the one from which you are recovering data. If you save to the same drive, you run the risk of overwriting other files you may want to recover, even in the same search. If you do not have a drive to which you can recover files, see Recovering to removable media below.   Note The Quick Search scan only works well if FileSaver is installed and actively protecting the volume that the files resided on.

		If Norton Utilities is not installed, or FileSaver is inactive
		1 Open UnErase from the Norton Utilities (NUM) CD or the Norton SystemWorks (NSW) CD. The safest way to do this is to start the computer from the NUM or NSW CD. This prevents the creation of preference files on the drive. If the NUM or NSW CD does not boot the computer, then boot from the Apple System CD and launch UnErase from the copy on the computer. If the hard drive is called Macintosh HD, change its name before you boot from a System CD. (This is to prevent Virtual Memory swap files from overwriting your data.) 2 Press Command+B, or click Tools, then Customized Search. 3 Select the disk the files were on. 4 Click erased files or real files, or both, depending on what you are searching for. If the disk is damaged or not mounting, you should choose both real and erased files. 5 Click Catalog Tree Search under Criteria. 6 Click Search. 7 Select files you want to UnErase. 8 Click the Recover button. 9 Choose a location, preferably other than the drive from which you are recovering data. Norton Utilities places the recovered files in a Recovered Files folder at this location. If the files you are looking for do not appear, repeat steps 1 through 5 from above. Then click Search entire disk for parts of the catalog tree in the Catalog Search tab. Continue with steps 6 through 9. If the files you are looking for still do not appear, you will need to try the other search methods.

		Follow these steps to use other search methods
		1 Click Customized Search, or command+B. The Customized Search window will appear. 2 Click File Type Search or Text Search under Criteria in the Customized Search window.   The File Type Search allows you to look for files created by a specific program. The first sector of files created by some programs contain distinct characteristics that UnErase can look for. There are some limitations to using this method, however. First, not all documents have these distinctive characteristics. Second, files sometimes get fragmented when they are written to a drive. Since the file pattern scan can only identify the first sector of a file, this search method can only recover the first fragment of any file. If you have to use this search method, it is generally advised to search for one specific program type at a time, to avoid ending up with a large, unwieldy list. 1 When the file pattern scan finishes, a list of files will appear with generic file names identifying the applications that appear to have created them. The original file names are not available because there is no directory information to supply them; UnErase is only able to tell you that the files are of a certain program type. You will notice that the recoverability will be unknown. Again, this is because there is no directory record to tell UnErase how large the original file was. 2 Some files may appear to have recognizable file names. These are resource forks, and their recovery may be necessary for some types of documents to work properly. The presence of a resource fork with a file name does not necessarily mean your file is recoverable, since the actual file data is usually located in another part of the file, called a data fork. The data forks are the files that are recovered with generic application names. The data and resource forks of a file will usually appear next to each other in the list, with the resource fork file names ending with .rsrc. Please see the section titled, "Recovering Data and Resource Forks" within the Reference file, stored on the NUM CD in the Documentation folder, for information on rejoining data and resource forks, or see Symantec's technical document titled How to Join Data and Resource Forks Using UnErase.  The Text Search allows you to enter a text string that was in the original file, then searches for that string of characters on the drive. Typically this is only useful for word processing documents or email. Text Search files are automatically recovered as plain text documents and should be accessible using any word processor. 3 Click the Search button to begin the process using the selected search method.

		When you have a list of files
		1 Select a possible file and choose View Contents to determine if it is a file you want to recover. Most document types will be displayed as unintelligible computer code, but you may be able to find a few words that can help you identify a file if you scroll through the window. 2 If you determine that this is a file you want, close the View Contents window and click Recover.   Note You can determine how much space will be needed for the recovered files by selecting the files to recover. A total will appear in the lower-right corner of the recovery window. 3 Choose a location (preferably other than the drive from which you are recovering data). The recovered file will be placed in a folder called Recovered Files at this location.   Note You can select a network volume as the recovery location by using the Chooser, located in the Apple menu. 4 Open the program that created the file originally and try to open the file you recovered. If it opens, then save it to the hard drive and give it a new name. If it does not open, that usually is an indication that too much of the file has been lost and the file is permanently damaged. It is sometimes possible to retrieve raw text out of such files however. This can be useful when recovering word processing documents. Try dragging the file to the Fast Find icon in the Norton Tools folder. When you select the file in the Fast Find window, click the magnifying glass icon to view its contents. Any readable text can be copied and pasted into a new text document.

		Recovering to removable media
		If you do not have another hard drive that you can save files to, you may need to UnErase files to removable media such as, floppy, Zip, Jaz, or Super disks. To recover to removable media, choose a mounted disk as the destination in the Recover dialog box. Norton Utilities cannot guarantee the recoverability of any lost file. If, after recovering a file, you are unable to open it, the file has probably sustained damage that Norton Utilities will be unable to repair.

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