The reason to do so is pretty simple. I am kind of lazy to delete the same stuff twice and if I were to leave everything in recycle bin, I’ll have no space left on my 80 Gig drive. As a result, I have lost some really important information from my system. But the good thing about me is my obsession to install a data recovery software/undelete software after a fresh install of Windows and this habit (a good one for a change) has saved me from losing critical information.

The data can be lost not just because of an ignorant habit but also due to virus attacks or accidentally deleted partition or formatted drive from which you forgot to take backup of some folder or file.

Now that I have given you the argument about deletion of files, I am sure you have realized that this post will be looking at softwares which are life savers and are called as data recovery softwares. They help you recover files from your drive which were lost because of any of the reasons mentioned above.

The scope of this post will be restricted to only Windows platform. However, we will cover Linux and Mac in a similar post in future. Also, for a change we are not going to just focus our attention on free data recovery softwares. We are going to look at the best available solution even if they cost you some bucks. It’s up to you do a cost benefit analysis before buying these softwares.

Let’s start by looking at some data recovery softwares. They are not in any order of ranking or rating.

1. Recover My Files

License: Free to try and $59.95 to buy

OS: All Windows

Limitations: You cannot save the recovered files in the trial mode. You’ll have to buy the software to save the files.

Recover My Files is one of the industry’s leading data recovery software provider. Following are some of the features offered by Recover My Files:

It has a very easy to use user interface. You can preview the files before restoring them and will be able to recover your data with just a few clicks.

Win Free Licenses worth $59.95 each.

We at TNerd are giving away 2 license keys worth $59.95 each of RecoverMyFiles to the 2 lucky commentators. Thanks to GetData.com for giving away two licenses of RecoverMyFiles to our readers. In order to win the licences comment on the this post and tell us the cause of data loss and what kind of data you lost.

The winners will be the first two commentators, so leave your genuine email while commenting on the post. The two winners will be chosen by the sole discretion of TNerd.com depending on the quality of the comment.

However, for people who could not make it on time to comment on the post, don’t get disappointed as you can get Recover My Files at 25% discount by using the following discount coupon.

Recover My Files Discount Coupon: EV6D3A

2. VirtualLab Data Recovery

License: Free to try and $39.95 for just 100MB data. For 1 GB of data you’ll have to pay $99.95 and $199.95 for 10 GB.

OS: All Windows, Mac

Limitations: You cannot save the recovered files in the trial mode. You’ll have to buy the software to save the files.

Boasts of being six data recovery programs in one, VirtualLab Data Recovery can help you with recovering deleted data, corrupted or formatted drives, CD & DVD-ROM Disks, RAID, flash drives, thumb drives, camera cards, USB/Firewire drives, Outlook & Thunderbird E-mail and even Mac Volumes. The software also makes sector by sector disk image of a failing hard disk, so you can perform safe recovery of that portion.

3. GetDataBack Data Recovery

License: Free to try and $79.00

OS: All Windows different software for FAT and NTFS.

Limitations: You cannot save the recovered files in the trial mode. You’ll have to buy the software to save the files.

With an easy to use interface, GetDataBack Data Recovery claims to recover almost all kind of data deleted, damaged or corrupted with virus. The biggest draw back of GetDataBack Recovery is that it has different software for recovering FAT and NTFS format drives.

Get 20% Discount at GetDataBack only at TNerd.com

You can also avail a 20% discount on GetDataBack Data Recovery. All you have to do is put TNERD0808 into the field for comments and suggestions on GetDataBack Recovery online order form. The offer is valid till 15 Sep 2008.

GetDataBack Data Recovery Discount Coupon: TNERD0808

4. Active@ UNDELETE

License: Free to try and $39.95

OS: All Windows

Limitations: In trial mode you can recover only files which are less than or equal to 64KB in size

Active@ UNDELETE comes with the feature to preview your files before restoring them and has a very simple and user friendly interface. Let’s see what the company promises to offer

Active@ UNDELETE – Data Recovery is a powerful data recovery software that helps you to recover deleted files, lost and formatted data from hard drives, floppy disks, basic and dynamic volumes, hardware or software RAID<RAID0 & RAID5>.

Software supports: NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, NTFS5, NTFS+EFS file systems and works under all Windows family operating systems: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP and Windows VISTA. Besides hard disk drives program supports recovery from removable devices like Secure Digital, Compact Flash, SmartMedia, SONY Memory Stick, ZIP drives, USB Hard drives etc …

5. File Scavenger Data Recovery

License: Free to try and $49.00

OS: All Windows

Limitations: In trial mode you can recover only files which are less than or equal to 64KB in size

File Scavenger Data Recovery claims to recover Hard disks, floppy disks, ZIP disks, memory sticks, flash cards, RAIDs, and more. It can recover data lost due to Accidental deletion, removal from the Recycle Bin. Corrupt disk, formatted or deleted volume or partition. Partially damaged disk with bad spots. Broken RAID or spanned volume.

6. Restorer2000 Pro

License: Free to try and $30.00

OS: All Windows

Limitations: In trial mode you can recover only files which are less than or equal to 128KB in size

Following is a description from the publisher’s site:

Restorer2000 PRO 3.3 is the complete professional solution for your data recovery needs and has all the features and benefits of Restorer2000 3.3 plus adds some advanced data recovery capabilities such as recovery from hardware and software RAID, basic and dynamic disks.

The PRO version also has additional file recovery algorithm that searches for files of known types using typical features of their structures and allows: to increase the file recovery quality when the file system is not damaged; to restore files that are not recognized in file system metadata and not found during disk scanning; to recover files from devices with unknown file systems including HD, CD, DVD, external ZIP/USB, removable SmartMedia, Memory Stick, SD cards, etc..

I hope you enjoyed the review and have participated in the contest. TNerd will be bringing you more such contests and on a regular basis and hence subscribing to our RSS would help you keep informed of these contests. We’ll be announcing the two lucky winners as soon as we have the results.

Talking about career, Internet has brought a variety of new career options. Lets look at a few of these newly emerging careers.

Blogging: Blogging is one of the biggest attractions on the Internet as of now, will it be the same five years from now? Yes! It will be even stronger. Similar trends were recorded in the west when blogging was a hobby and not a bread winner. Now, Asia is experiencing the craze over blogging where millions of youngsters are blogging and want to reach out to people from different continents and match their views with others.

Blogging can be for different reasons, e.g. Awareness, Personal Blog, Hobby, Commercial blogging.

If you are new to blogging and want to know what are your options, visit blogger.com or wordpress.org and you can start blogging in minutes. However, if you are little technical then you can download one of the content managements packages like Wordpress.org or Joomla.com and have your blog on your own domain.

SEO: I have seen this (Search Engine Optimization – SEO) industry growing bottoms up. This is one of the fastest growing industry and the way this industry is changing and evolving your roles & responsibilities and tasks on job are likely to change biweekly if not weekly.

There are different types of SEO’s, mainly WhiteHat and BlackHat SEO’s however the trend is flashing a new emerging type of SEO which is termed as Negative SEO.

Content Writer/Article Writer: “Content is King” This is the mantra for success and frankly its not rocket science. It’s easily understood right? You can be a part of this mantra and work as a content writer/Article Writer where you will be paid to write on specific topics.

If you are interested in something like this then here are a few websites you can start with http://www.guru.com/ http://freelancewrite.about.com/

Freelance Programmer/Developer: If you have the skill then you don’t have to bother about job security, there are tons of jobs for you out there. How does this work? Simple, all you have to do is register with a site that offers projects to freelancers and start bidding for your favorite project. One site that offers similar functionality is http://rentacoder.com

I personally know people who started as a freelance developer and ended up setting up a small size company to handle as many projects as they can from such websites.

Virtual DJ: Frankly, this does not surprise me at all. Lets look at it this way, We started with stage shows, technology evolved and radio came into picture, with more advancements in technology we started buying and watching soap operas on TV and now as the Internet age evolves the next logical thing for human race to do was to make shows for Internet and this is exactly what Virtual DJ is all about.

Hosting a show on the Internet makes you a Virtual DJ.

Internet Jockey: This one is a little confusing or may be because of its infancy the profile is still underdeveloped and recognized. From what I have learned and know this job involves live chatting with the website visitors. Mostly these are entertainment and music websites.

Links:
Job Application for Internet DJ
A Popular Internet Jockey

That’s all for now, if you know of any other Jobs coming up in the internet industry do leave a comment and let us know about it.

A fan following like this does help in the development of the product and WordPress is the best example. WordPress runs a something what they like to call a virtual office where the developers are scattered around the world.

WordPress is easy to install and easier to use and later you can enhance your blog by adding millions of themes and pulg-in’s available on the internet.

Looking for themes? Try the following sites:
Themes.wordpress.net  : I’d be crazy not to mentions this URL
Alexking.org/ : I love the Theme Browser concept
Itcouldbethisone.com/ : This is one of the best themes I have come so far. Good looking and smart looking themes with properly arranged stuff on the side bar, I just love it.
Getk2.com/: K2 will change the way you write, browse, comment, search, etc. on Wordpress blogs. "K2 is a WordPress modification—an advanced template"
Emilyrobbins.com/: If these were not enough then this link has about 1000 links to various sites offering WordPress templates.

I will soon write about the best available WordPress plug-in’s and the best sites offering the plug-in’s.. Stay Tuned!

So the moral of the story is use Fleck instead of Bookmarking if you have something specific about the feature or the website on the whole!

Now the next logical question is what the heck is Fleck? Let me tell you! Fleck is a revolutionary idea which lets you create something like "3M Post-it" one the webpage’s and save it. This can come in real handy if you want to show something specific about a site or a page to someone on the other side of the globe. Click here to see an example.

The Fleck team intelligently created Bookmarklet, Browser Extension, Widgets, Wordpress Plug-ins to widen their reach and have larger user base. I liked the Bookmarklet and did leave it on my browser and I will certainly play around with it for a while.

Let’s see where Fleck can improve its great product (first things first)

• Fleck On Browsers: Fleck I tried using Fleck with FireFox, Opera and Internet Explorer. As it worked well with FireFox and Opera, there is still some work to be done for the Internet Explorer users and from what I hear the Fleck team is already on it. Click here to see an example of IE.
• Flash Enable Site: I tried Fleck on my personal site SyedAbbas.com to see how it works with Flash and the "Note" and "Bullet" went under the embedded flash on the page. Click here to see an example.
• Browser Extensions: Fleck offers an extension for FireFox and IE users. I tried the IE extension but it didn’t work. It did complete the installation successfully however not did not show any button on the navigation bar.
• WordPress Plug-in: I love the thought but not the execution. What I did not like about the plug in is that once the plug-in is activated it automatically starts showing up on Single Post pages. It would be better if the plug-in offers a piece of code which can be placed anywhere instead of Fleck deciding how and where it shows. With the little coding knowledge I have, I might be able to decide where is shows but not everyone can do this.
• Fleck Fonts: I do not know how important this is and if people would even think of this but I though the option of changing the font size should have been there.

Overall its a great Idea, Fantastic effort by the Fleck team and I believe they are here to stay! Click here to try Fleck.com