Review

PowerQuest Lost & Found 
for Windows 95/98/NT

By Lowell Conn, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

This program is just too slow and laborious to excite this reviewer. Other programs certainly make locating and recovering the odd deleted or misplaced file easier.

The program disk will sit on your bookshelf and collect dust. But then one day, the big hard drive crash will come. Or your 12-year-old will accidentally format the hard drive and you will lose an entire year's worth of business and personal data.

Then, and only then, will you thank PowerQuest for Lost&Found, its data recovery dynamo.

Please accept an apology for the mixed messages in the previous paragraph. Lost&Found is a powerful utility that will reconstruct files that have been erased or lost due to disk damage. But borne on Norton Utilities' school of data recovery program, it is difficult for to come to grips with the outright non-friendly and non-customizable interface of PowerQuest's Lost&Found.

First, this program cannot run from Windows, an instant drawback for users unaccustomed to the DOS format (or those repressing age-old command line memories). Second, Lost&Found is slow. Run it. Then wait. Then watch it run a diagnostics program on your computer. Then wait.

The lag is exacerbated by the curious absence of a progress bar. More than once this reviewer pressed the return key out of impatience and was rewarded by further lag and then the automatic selection of the first option on the next menu.

Since using the return key had accepted an unseen option, I would have to backpedal to see what I had accepted and undo the move, if necessary.

Another no-no: the program scans the entire hard drive before delivering a report on deleted files and subdirectories. The time investment, especially when searching out just one or two files, makes other data recovery solutions more appealing.

But here's the catch: Lost&Found does exactly what it bills. And it does it well, with bare bones, no special options, no quick routes, or hotkeys. You will lose patience while this program is running. Nevertheless, it is good at salvaging files other data recovery programs would not even recognize.

After the 15-minute startup and disk scan sequence, Lost&Found recovered fifty megs of a directory that I had erased a year ago. The result is miraculous, if you consider the files were fully recovered and fully functional. One drawback that doubles as a benefit: the exhaustive disk diagnostics utility is not a separate option that you can choose only when you want to use it.

The benefit is that it will catch physical disk damage before it perpetuates damaged data from the damaged area. If or when the program finds this, you'll be thankful for the addition.

PowerQuest's Lost&Found is ugly and sluggish but it does the job. And when or if that day comes when one accidental keystroke (or bug or virus) erases key - or all - information, the many failings of Lost&Found will somehow seem inconsequential next to its strong loss recovery ability.

Rating: 2.75/5.0
Reviewer's comments: PowerQuest's Lost&Found does the job, but more options and a better interface would serve its users well.
Price: $70 US / $105