Windows: If you've found yourself wishing that your flash drive had a recycle bin so that your portable apps and documents had the same safety net that your desktop files do, iBin brings recycle bin functionality to your flash drive.

Mac only: You know that sinking feeling you get when you accidentally delete your photos or reformat your camera's memory card without first removing the pictures on it? Reach for Exif Untrasher instead of antacids and rescue those pics from annihilation.

Windows only: Free, open source application HFSExplorer reads and extracts files from drives formatted with the HFS+ file system native to Macs. Common uses for HFSExplorer include reading files from your Mac file system from Windows running in Boot Camp or—something I've used it for—grabbing music in Windows from a Mac-formatted iPod. HFSExplorer is free, Windows only, requires Java. For help setting it up, check out Simple Help's guide. HFSExplorer

Windows 2000/XP/2003 only: Free file recovery utility Partition Drive and Mount could be a real panic-reducer for anyone realizing too late that they really needed that file or folder from a just-removed partition. The app scans your hard drive and finds every hint of partitions it can, whether one disappeared during resizing or just stopped showing up. You can then mount the missing section as a drive letter and grab data from the partition, or save an image of the partition elsewhere for backup or recovery. The only restriction on this freeware is a data transfer limit of 512 Kb/s, which is pretty swift for regular home users. Partition Find and Mount is a free download for Windows XP/200x systems only.

Partition Find and Mount

Windows only: Zero Assumption Recovery is a simple tool that can be a serious lifesaver, especially if you've just accidentally formatted a memory card or came home from vacation to a supposedly empty camera. The free download does what many professional (and costly) image recovery programs do, running through memory blocks and piecing together scattered pictures, then dumping them in a folder of your choosing. ZAR supports most major image formats, including JPEG and RAW, and our commenters have given it a try and subsequent thumbs up. Zero Assumption Recovery is a free download for Windows systems only; portions of the program are paid-to-unlock, but image recovery is free. Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery

Windows Vista only: Shadow Copies, an automated file version saver built into all copies of Windows Vista (and enabled by default), isn't a complete backup solution, but it could be a life-saver in certain situations. As The How-To Geek blog points out, however, it's pretty hard to find, let alone extract files from. Luckily, a forum member at the Geek's site has posted a complete tutorial on accessing and recovering previous file versions using the free utility ShadowExplorer. Using ShadowExplorer requires a good deal more clicking and searching than Apple's Time Machine, but it's a good solution for those "Oops, I forgot to back up ..." moments. Hit the link below for instructions and screenshots. Recover Files with Shadow Copies on Any Version of Windows Vista

Blogger Kent Brewster used previously mentioned file recovery utility PhotoRec to rescue an unreadable thumb drive. He writes: PhotoRec ignores the file system in favour of finding lost files, so it works on FAT, NTFS, EXT2/EXT3, HFS, and (with certain caveats) ReiserFS. And since it's looking for known file headers and using data carving techniques, more than eighty file types—among them DOC, PDF, and PPT—are instantly recoverable.And recover all the files on Kent's USB drive PhotoRec did; all he had to do was rebuild the directory structure and rename the files.

Easy Flash Drive Data Recovery with PhotoRec