R-Undelete is a Windows file recovery program for retrieving deleted files and finding data on formatted, damaged, or deleted partitions. It works with local storage such as hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, and memory cards. Its recovery process moves from choosing a disk to inspecting the files it finds and saving selected items to another disk.
Disk scanning
R-Undelete starts with a Quick Scan of the selected disk. When a deleted partition no longer appears as a normal drive, it can search the device’s unallocated space for partitions. It can also scan unrecognized space where a damaged partition may reside.
Deep Scan examines file information and searches the disk for recognizable file signatures. It can find content the initial scan misses, including files on a partition that was reformatted with a different file system. A previous partition found during the scan can be selected separately to examine its files.
Signature searching has a practical limit: when recovery relies entirely on this method, the original filenames and folder structure are unavailable. Deep Scan can be paused and resumed, and the program retains scan information for a device so that reconnecting it does not always require starting the analysis again.
Filtering, previewing and saving found files
Found files appear in categories for common file types, with a Custom tab for a chosen set of types. R-Undelete can display a detailed list or folder tree, while pictures also have a tile view. Sorting by name, path, size, or date helps narrow a large result set; a time-period filter further limits what is shown. Deleted files appear by default, with an option to include existing files.
The filename search accepts wildcard masks, so a search such as *.png can isolate PNG images. Searches apply to the current tab; selecting All broadens the search to all found files. Marking a file for recovery carries that selection across the tabs where it appears.
R-Undelete’s built-in viewer helps identify a file before saving it. Pictures can be rotated, audio and video can be played, and Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and PDF documents can be inspected without their respective applications installed. The PDF viewer includes page navigation and text search. These previews supplement the recovery-chance estimates shown in the file list.
Recovered files can be saved into folders organized by file type or according to their original folder structure where that information is available. The destination needs to be another disk, keeping the recovery output away from the source data. A recovery log can be saved separately, and R-Undelete opens the output folder when the operation finishes.
Disk images
R-Undelete can create an image of a disk and then use that image as the recovery source. After opening the image, the user can search and recover files from it as though it were the original device. This allows later analysis to work from the saved copy rather than repeatedly reading a disk with hardware problems.
S.M.A.R.T. information is available from the disk’s context menu. Yellow and red warning symbols distinguish possible hardware problems from a critical drive condition, helping identify when imaging or specialist recovery should take priority over further scans.
R-Undelete editions and supported storage
The free R-Undelete Home edition recovers files from FAT and exFAT devices, including USB storage and camera memory cards. It also provides scanning and previews for NTFS and ReFS, but saving recovered files from those file systems is restricted by file size. The paid R-Undelete license removes that saving restriction and supports recovery from FAT, exFAT, NTFS, and ReFS.
R-Undelete can work with intact RAID volumes and Windows Storage Spaces that are visible to Windows. Reconstructing a damaged RAID, editing disk contents in a hex editor, and recovering over a network belong to the separate R-Studio product rather than R-Undelete.
File shredding
R-Undelete also has a Shredder for deleted files that should remain unrecoverable. Selected items go into a separate Shredder tab for inspection before the operation runs. Shredding replaces their content with zeros; the files may still appear in later scans, but their former content is no longer present. Items can be removed from the Shredder queue before processing.
