Norton GoBack is one of those products that you only have to need once to make it 1000% worth its cost and overhead.

I’m normally very careful about deleting files on my PC. This morning I deleted an image file forgetting that I had already imported it into Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 and its browser does not like deleted files that it didn’t delete. Because that file was dumped, the Organizer part of Elements wouldn’t launch at all without it. Rather brain-dead of Elements not to say “hey, I can’t find the file…should I skip it?” but that’s besides the point. It just wouldn’t launch without giving some obscure error and then the application shut down.

Fire up GoBack’s “File & Version Rescue,” search for the file that was deleted, 3 seconds later it’s found in perfect condition (referencing the location on my desktop it was last seen), restore, Elements works again. Phew.

Speak of which, Elements for Windows is a very nice, tight little application for those times when Photoshop is overkill and the files I want are on the PC, not the Mac.