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Text File  |  1987-04-20  |  2KB  |  49 lines
  1.           UNDEL (Undelete)                        Steven Holzner
  2.           Command
  3.           Copyright (c) 1986, Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.
  4.           ______________________________________________________
  5.  
  6.           Purpose:  Recovers files on double-sided floppy disks
  7.                     that have been accidentally deleted.
  8.  
  9.           Format:   UNDEL [d:]filename[.ext]
  10.  
  11.           Remarks:  Unless special measures are taken, DOS does
  12.                     not overwrite the contents of a file when it
  13.                     deletes the file.  Rather, DOS simply changes
  14.                     the first letter of the filename to E5 in its
  15.                     directory table and unassigns the second (and
  16.                     subsequent) clusters for the file from its
  17.                     file allocation table.  When no files have
  18.                     been subsequently stored to disk that would
  19.                     use the deallocated clusters, the deleted
  20.                     file can usually be recovered intact by
  21.                     UNDEL.COM.
  22.  
  23.                     As an aid to recovery of ASCII files, the
  24.                     UNDEL command may be given as
  25.  
  26.                     UNDEL/A [d:]filename[.ext]
  27.  
  28.                     The /A parameter is designed to provide a
  29.                     display of each proposed cluster to be
  30.                     recovered before it is actually included in
  31.                     the undeleted file.  With late versions of
  32.                     PC-DOS, however, the use of the /A parameter
  33.                     has been found to return the error message,
  34.                     "File Not Found Deleted".  In such cases,
  35.                     entering UNDEL without the added parameter is
  36.                     normally sufficient to recover the complete
  37.                     file without loss.
  38.  
  39.                     Notes:
  40.  
  41.                     1.   UNDEL should not be used on 8-sector
  42.                          disks (such as the distribution copy
  43.                          of this disk), but only on 9-sector,
  44.                          double-sided floppies.
  45.  
  46.                     2.   Requires the use of DOS 2.0 or later,
  47.                          but the command does not recognize
  48.                          pathnames.
  49.