undeletion

Undeletion is a feature for restoring computer files which have been removed from a file system by file deletion. Deleted data can be recovered on many file systems, but not all file systems provide an undeletion feature. Recovering data without an undeletion facility is usually called data recovery, rather than undeletion. Undeletion can both help prevent users from accidentally losing data, or can pose a computer security risk, since users may not be aware that deleted files remain accessible.

==Support== Not all file systems or operating systems support undeletion. Undeletion is possible on all FAT file systems, with undeletion utilities provided since MS-DOS 5.0 and DR DOS 6.0 in 1991. It is not supported by most modern UNIX file systems, though AdvFS is a notable exception. The ext2 file system has an add-on program called e2undel which allows file undeletion. The similar ext3 file system does not officially support undeletion, but utilities like ext4magic, extundelete, PhotoRec and ext3grep were written to automate the undeletion on ext3 volumes. Undelete was proposed in ext4, but is yet to be implemented. However, a trash bin feature was posted as a patch on December 4, 2006. The Trash bin feature uses undelete attributes in ext2/3/4 and Reiser file systems.