looking for powerful undelete proogram

[vj69]

Recently, in the midst of trying to clean up and organize my data, I transferred files from old drives to one central location. That drive has now failed and I *foolishly* deleted the files from their original locations. Does anyone know of an effective undelete program that delivers what it promises? My preference would be that it is free, but I don't mind paying for something that will get my data back. It would be for an old W98 (yes, 98) machine, unless I decide to physically move the drives to a newer machine for recovery purposes. Is this method even suggested? Thanks for any and all input.

[Sylvander]

The FREE Emergency Boot CD = EBCD has among it MANY included programs, an "Un-erase" [actually an undelete] program [on menu 2] that is effective and simple to use.
It scans a chosen partition/drive for deleted files, lists all of them, and rates the likelihood of them being recoverable.
Provided none of the links in the file "chain" have been overwritten since being deleted, they will be marked as "good" and fully recoverable.
You just choose them for recovery.
"Dip your toe in the water" by first recovering a single file.

It also includes the "DiskEdit" program [menu 2] that can look directly at the partition/drive contents, but this is not nearly so easy to use.

The "File Manager" [menu 1] allows you to browse the partition/drive folder/file contents, before and after recovery to see if the files are there.
It has left & right panes to display 2 partitions/drives, and you can use it to copy the files from [a folder on] one partition/drive to the other.

Also includes "MS Scandisk" [menu 2] so you can scan/fix the file systems on all the partitions/drives.

Also includes "Drive Fitness Test" [menu 1] so you can scan the physical HDD to see whether all's well.

Also includes "Win98/ME Registry Tool" [menu 1] to scan & fix the registry [you might find that useful]

[Paul Komski]

It would be for an old W98 (yes, 98) machine, unless I decide to physically move the drives to a newer machine for recovery purposes. Is this method even suggested?

What is recommended is that you write nothing to the drive in the interim - and that includes booting from it - so it is much the best to add it as a slave or access it from a floppy or CD. Deleted files are never "deleted" until they are either erased with an erasing utility or they are overwritten in whole or in part. Until overwritten they have an attribute that just marks the file as deleted. The EBCD utility should be fine for a FAT partition (presumably the case on a Win98 drive) but other recovery programs such as GetDataBack and WinHex should also work just fine.