Shift + Delete.. Wait.. Why???????? :’(

Exams are over. Time to get back to the stuff I was working on before the exams (No not studies. I was not studying before the exams. That was done during the exams). Time to get back to that simple stock keeping application I was making for my Dad. Before the exams I had completed quite a lot of the basic aspects of the software that kind of made it a basic and functioning stock keeping software. When the exams started I had no choice but to leave it till the exams got over. So now I was with my exams over, ready to get back to working on the software. I was happy until….. that Shift + Delete Syndrome came over me. So here’s what happened.

One of the first things I had in my mind was to comment all of my code. It is only from this project that I am actually understanding the need for commenting codes. So I started.. Since commenting required me to revisit the whole code and understand all of my code, so I was also making some minor changes to my program simultaneously. Then the first event that led to my disaster started. For some strange reason I wanted to upgrade my wamp server to the latest one. So I downloaded it and before installing backed up my database. One more thing I did before installing, I uninstalled the current wamp version and deleted (Shift + Del) the current version’s wamp folder. I totally ignored the fact that even though I had backed up my databases all my software’s scripts/code resided in that same folder(which I did not backup). So Shift + Delete happened.. I hadn’t yet realized the blunder I had just committed. I happily installed the newer wamp, started it, logged in, copied the backed up databases only to realize the brains that would handle those databases was gone. I still had no idea why it was gone. I returned to my Netbeans IDE to realize the harsh truth that it was gone from there also. Now came my happy (happy???) realization moment. WTF? I deleted my code. No, not deleted, I had Shift- Deleted my code. I wanted to go back in time. Not some few moments back, infact some few years back. I wanted to find that ******* person who taught me this Shift Delete shit. This Shift Delete syndrome has caused me quite a lot of disasters in life. My phobia to the filled recycle bin icon encouraged this disease to take over me. Over the years I have maybe totally forgotten that a simple delete is good enough and most importantly Safe. I can always empty the recycle bin at regular intervals to prevent space wastage. But Shift Delete seems so cool. So what, you cannot restore accidentally deleted files, and so what, that the accidentally deleted file was bloody important. How does that matter, Shift delete is smart.

Minutes after the disaster I realized that it was not so much of a disaster after all. I lost just one days worth of work even though it was quite a lot of work. I have 2 or 3 more backups of the software done before my exams. Thanks to those backups or else I could have potentially lost all of my work. Still I wanted to recover my one day’s worth of work. I knew it was possible. So I googled for ‘how to recover deleted files’. The first software I tried was called Unerase. But it didn’t seem to work. It just kept scanning my partition and did nothing. So I tried another one, Recuva. This one seemed to work. I could recover four of my files without any kind of corruption. Rest all of them had gone and were unrecoverable. And as luck would have it the four recovered files were of no use for me since, the two files I had worked on were unrecoverable. In fact they didn’t even appear in the list of found files. So now it was confirmed. My stupidity had cost me.

Now, all was not bad that happened. I learnt good stuff from this whole ordeal. I have now pledged to get over my habit of shift deleting everything. In fact I am going to totally forget that something like that exists. From now only delete. And on a weekly basis empty my recycle bin. A week is good enough time to realize and get aware of the accidentally deleted files. From this I get an idea!! Here I present the new age recycle bin!

Here’s how it should work-

• No more recycle bin on the desktop or anywhere. Instead a utility software called something like recover recently deleted.
• This utility software would keep all the files that were deleted within some predefined time period. I recommend 7 days.
• Whatever file is deleted by the user has a grace period of 7 or any number of days before it is permanently deleted automatically.
• The software would group all the deleted files by date. At any point of time the files deleted within the last 7 days would be available to the user to recover or restore.
• One more thing. Just snatch away from the user the power to permanently delete files.

The above concept is no rocket science to implement. Its an easy and simple idea which basically removes the guilt from any user of wasting disk space for keeping deleted files and the power to permanently delete files. Ofcourse space is still used up to keep those deleted files but it would automatically be freed up when time comes.

Now one more thing I would like to talk about before ending this article.

Some ‘tips to follow if you accidentally shift-delete your files’ to increase your chances of recovering that file-

• As soon as you realize that a file was accidentally shift-deleted by you, Stop, take a breath and prevent any kind of writing to the partition/drive from which the file was shift-deleted. If it’s the same drive on which you have your windows installation then you can’t do anything since windows silently keeps reading and writing on to the partition. Still don’t lose hope.
• Download any data recovery software off the net. I recommend Recuva (http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download). Although it didn’t really come of any help to me still it’s a good software. The free version of the software allows you to actually recover data. A lot of free data recovery softwares would just do a scan of the partition and list all the deleted files and state if it can be recovered or not. For the actual recovery you will need to buy the full version.

• Also make sure that whatever recovery software you download, firstly, its not infected and secondly, don’t install this software in the same partition from which you shift-deleted your file, because that would mean that your lost file could be overwritten.
• If you could get back that lost file then Congrats. You were just saved from a lot of extra work. If you failed then, what can I say, you are in for a lot of hard work!
• Final and very important tip regardless of whether you succeeded or failed. FORGET SHIFT + DELETE forever!!!
  
  By Saurav Deb P.