{fh400D000Investigator III
{fb1000000What first struck me about the name of the package was that it had a slightly misleading title. In the past, Investigator had been a disc copying package, having been released twice as Investigator and Investigator II. In this release there are three other packages as well as the latest version of the copy software.

The first of these is called "HD{_Backup". It is a fairly comprehensive hard disc backup utility, with plenty of options, but I'm sure software like it can be found in the public domain (in fact, this part was written by Martin Wrthner, a PD author himself). Not impressed by 50 worth of software so far. The next program, "Innoculator", has some useful utilities, but again these appear to be a number of PD apps bundled into one package. The incorporated virus checker is far from comprehensive, and you would be recommended to purchase the Pineapple "_!Killer_"Reviews.Apps.RD/Killer"", with regular updates to remove all viruses instead (or don't use anybody else's discs). "Innoculator" (or "Inoculator" as VTI call it) does not handle errors very well at all. During use, I managed to get it to crash many times, losing this review totally at one point (thanks guys).

Luckily, for VTI, the remaining two utilities are very much better. "VTRecover" is an application to recover files from damaged discs, and also to repair dodgy files/discs. You can actually edit the disc's contents byte for byte, and copy sectors about. I was recently able to rescue a friend's Physics project from his ailing floppy disc using this function. It has an undelete facility, but this requires a certain amount of disc space free for this; I do not use it (call me Mr. Careful when near the "Delete file" option). It just so happens that a couple of weeks back, when saving the only copy of the Spectrum source code, I got a "bad map" error. It turns out that the second (backup) map on the hard disc had become corrupted, and I could not save anything, only load. Unfortunately, even the amazing "VTRecover" was not able to fix this, as it found the first map intact, and ignored the second one. What I did eventually (at great risk to my hard disc) was to purposely corrupt my first map, using "VTRecover" by finding the MAP (one of many things it can find), entering a dud byte, and saving the byte image back onto the hard disc. I could then recalculate the first map. My hard disc now works fine, but still fails a "*CheckMap" command; any suggestions?

Finally, probably one of the most controversial programs on the Arc; the latest version of Investigator. For those of you who don't know what it is, this is a program that allows you to copy (make a personal backup of -ED) any disc, even if it is copy protected. Well, I wasn't so sure about this, so I ran a few tests, and found that the backups I made of copy protected originals worked okay on my machine, an A3000, but fell down on a newer machine such as the A3010. I guess this is to do with the new disc operating system, because I know that A3010 owners cannot get some PD copy programs to work. I also found that Investigator III fell over quite a lot with fatal internal errors, and often crashed when it got to the hard bit of copying the dodgy bits of a disc. I liked the way you could examine a track and see how it is made up. This is a highly powerful piece of software, and should be used with care. We're not going to discuss software piracy here, but how you would use this software would be up to you, not the fault of VTI; the moral - check the manual before you use it. A year or so ago I spent quite a few hours writing a routine to copy the Daniel Simms copy-protection routine as used by Krisalis. I did not distribute this code as I thought it would jeopardise sales. Next thing I know, they were giving it away the game in question free with the A3010, and with the copy protection removed; such is life.

I would say that this software is not worth the 50 price tag. If you want cheap file recovery then check out LOOKsystems offering. If you after a utility to backup software, or to copy it amongst friends (which we do not in any way endorse) then it is probably for you. As a final note, Dave Holden of APDL tells me that he is releasing a set of disc copying programs in the near future, so it might be worth waiting to see what that is like first.

Rating: 6/10

Product: Investigator III
Price: 49,95
Availability: All Acorn 32-bit machines
Contact: VTI (01243) 531194
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