You're working on an unsaved work processor document and your computer crashes.
Your writing if gone forever, right?
You're composing an email, and erase a block of text you later realize was important.
You're completely out of luck, right?
You've typed an imortant phone number, but accidentally over-written it.
If "Command-Z" won't work, nothing will, right?
There are a myriad ways to recover files on a hard drive, but conventional wisdom says that once unsaved data - existing only in ghostly RAM - is lost, there's no way to EVER recover that data.
Well now there is, because Search & Rescue does just that. Hard drive recovery often costs over $1000, and involves days (or weeks) of waiting. Unsaved text lost in RAM can be equally distressing but Search & Rescue salvages your hard work within seconds.
Welcome to Search & Rescue, an application which gives you the ability to recover work which would otherwise be lost forever following a system or application crash.
The most likely scenario in which you may need Search & Rescue is if your Mac crashes while working on a typed document, and you lose some or all of you text. It is likely that the text is still there, somewhere, in memory, but with no way to get at it, you are stuck! In this situation Search & Rescue is indeed a friend. You simply enter a portion of text which you know to exist in your document, and Search and Rescue will locate possible places in memory where you may be able to salvage your text - often in full.
So what about if you have to restart your Mac? Search & Rescue may well still be able to recover your data. Simply run Search & Rescue immediately after your Mac has restarted!
Search & Rescue differs from auto-savers because it can be used in any situations where you are typing text, even text that you do not or cannot normally save. For example if you are submitting some information in a form on the web and you experience a crash, or your browser 'deletes' the text for some reason (maybe you loaded a different page), then Search & Rescue may be able to salvage that text. Search & Rescue does not have to be installed as a system extension or control panel - it can always be there if you need it. Search & Rescue is, however, now accompanied by the Search & Rescue Panic Key control panel which is described in the next paragraph.
• NEW In Version 2.0!
The most noticeable addition to the range of tools Search & Rescue provides is the Search & Rescue Panic Key which comes in the form of a control panel.
The Panic Key allows you, at the touch of a button, to save the entire contents of your computers memory to a single file which is searchable by the Search & Rescue application at your leisure.
Version 2.0 of Search & Rescue application sees several improvements. Firstly, you will notice that ‘Search’ windows are now fully resizable, making Search & Rescue easier to use. As well as the window being resizable, the results list can be resized producing a larger memory view. Another major change is the automatic sorting of result items in the results list. They are ‘temperature’ coded - red items at the top of the list. Search & Rescue looks at the memory ahead of each result item and counts how much ASCII text is present. This feature works especially well when searching for large documents as a lot of text means more chance of finding a long piece of text.
• Requirements
Search & Rescue provides support for modern operating system features such as the Appearance Manager and Navigation Services but also runs well on older, pre-Mac OS 8 systems. Search & Rescue requires System 7.1 or later to be installed.
Search & Rescue runs best with at least 1600K of memory allocated to it but, on machines with a limited amount of RAM, 800K will be sufficient for performing searches and saving recovered text.
Note for RAM Doubler users - Search & Rescue is currently not compatible with RAM Doubler. If RAM Double *is* extending your Mac's memory Search & Rescue may not function correctly and may crash on some machines. If RAM Doubler is installed but *not* adding memory then Search & Rescue should function correctly - some users find that they experience fewer memory problems with RAM Doubler set up in this way.
Search & Rescue is, however, compatible with Apple's virtual memory enabled with the Memory control panel.
• How to use Search & Rescue
Hopefully, you will find Search & Rescue easy to use. A new 'Search' window is created when you run Search & Rescue, in which you initialise a search for a specific piece of text.
Full documentation is supplied in the Search & Rescue Manual which can be found in the installation folder. Version 2.0 now has online balloon help - just choose Show Balloons from the Help menu.
• Version History
2.0.1 - 15th May 2000
- Better window placement
- Fixed a tiny bug in the text editor effecting selections when dealing with large
text files
- Fixed some typos in the manual - nothing serious
- Searching files should be slightly faster on 68k Macs
- Added warning to installer about RAM Doubler incompatability
2.0.0 - 13th May 2000
- Introduction of Search & Rescue Panic Key and
RAM Image files.
- Search windows are now resizable.
- Search results logically ordered.
- Support for Navigation Services.
- More substantial manual.
- Generally nicer.
- Balloon help added.
1.0.1 - 20th May 1999
- Some bugs (mostly in the text editor) fixed.
1.0.0 - 14th April 1999
- Initial release.
• Registering your copy
An unregistered copy of Search & Rescue will expire after 31 days. You can buy Search & Rescue online of using the Register program included. You can register by email, snail mail, fax or on the web. Full details on how to pay are included in the Search & Rescue manual.
• Contact Information
( Double clickable link/bookmark files can be found in the 'Net Resources' folder included with this distribution. ) I can be contacted by...
email: tjriley@kagi.com
address: Faber Old Malmesbury Road,
Wootton Bassett,
Swindon,
Wiltshire SN4 7HT,
UK.
web: <http://www.kagi.com/tjriley/>
• Search & Rescue is written with the totally cool...
