When you lose an important partition, your data will also be lost. You may think that this data is gone forever and cannot be restored. In fact, it is not. You can use professional data recovery software such as MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover data from lost partition. Continue reading this article to learn how to do it.
What Is Partition
While you don’t have to understand how the partition works, you need to know about its role in allowing you to store data on a storage device, which can help you choose the best way to recover it.
Partition is a logical division of the hard disk where an operating system, applications, files, and other information resources are located. The operating systems and file systems consider it as an independent unit. They also treat the information in each partition as a separate hard drive. Because of that, hard drives can operate as several smaller parts to improve efficiency.
The information about partitions is stored in a partition table, which is located in a special area on the storage device called Master Boot Record (MBR), GUID Partition Table (GPT), or something with a similar name.
To help you have a clearer understanding of partition, you can regard it as a container that can store data of a storage device. Without any partitions, your computer has no idea where to store the data. That will make storage devices useless and meaningless.
See Also: A Brief Introduction of Hard Disk Partition
Common Reasons for Partition Loss
As for partition loss, here are several factors about why that happens:
- You may delete it accidentally. Accidental deletion is the most common reason for partition loss. When you perform disk management operations such as freeing up disk space or customizing the disk size, you may accidentally delete important partitions.
- The hard drive crashed. Unexpected hardware failure may render the entire hard disk unrecognizable, or affect the partition table or partition data, resulting in partition loss.
- Viruses attack your computer. A virus or malware may corrupt the partition table, making the partition inaccessible or lost.
- Power outages and shutdowns. Improper power outages or shutdowns may affect partition and data integrity, especially when performing data writes or other management operations on the partition.
Is It Possible to Recover Data From Lost or Deleted Partition
Although this problem seems severe, luckily you can recover data after deleting a partition. However, the chance of successfully recovering the lost partition depends on what you do after the partition is lost. There are some things you can do to increase the chances.
First of all, when your partition is lost, you should stop using the affected hard drive and recover the partition or the files on it quickly. The original data will not be erased immediately when the partition is lost, but the space will be marked as available for reuse. When new data is stored here, the original data will be overwritten and cannot be recovered.
What’s more, you should find a reliable tool that will not cause more serious damage to the affected hard disk and lost data to perform data or partition recovery.
Lastly, partition recovery is usually not possible if the lost partition has been overwritten by another partition and used to store new data.
How to Recover Data From Lost Partition on Windows
Now that you have known that the data in the lost partition can be recovered, so the next step is to solve the problem of how to recover it. Here are two good data recovery software available to help you recover data from lost partition on Windows.
Before You Do: Confirm Whether the Partition Is Really Lost
Before you start recovering your files from the lost partition, there is one thing you should confirm – if your partition is really lost. Sometimes the partition is not displayed in File Explorer due to the loss of the drive letter, which makes the partition appear to be lost. You need to check if yours is the same situation. How to check that? Here is a full guide.
Right-click the Start button to open the Disk Management. You can see all the hard disks in it. Now you can find the partition which is not displayed in File Explorer and check if it has a drive letter. If not, assign it a drive letter. Here are the steps to assign a drive letter:
Step 1: Right-click on your partition and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths….
Step 2: In the pop-up window, select Add… to continue.
Step 3: When a new window shows, check Assign the following drive letter, choose an available drive letter from the drop-down menu, and then click on OK.
After assigning a drive letter, you should check if this partition is displayed normally. If it shows up in File Explorer, the data should be also in it. On the contrary, if not, you should use the following methods to recover data from lost partition.
Method 1: Use MiniTool Power Data Recovery
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a free file restore tool specifically designed to scan and recover deleted, lost, and existing files under different situations. It can recover lost data not only from existing partitions but also from unallocated space and lost partitions.
Moreover, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is highly adaptable to all file storage media, including HDDs, SSDs, USB flash drives, SD cards, CDs/DVDs, and more.
This tool is suitable for Windows 11/10/8.1/8. If your system is one of them, you can first try the free edition of this software. This edition supports recovering 1GB of files for free. Now download and install it to recover data.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 1. Find the lost partition to scan for the data
After you download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery, launch this free software. When you enter the main interface, you will be in the Logical Drives section by default. Now find the lost partition according to the volume size, move your cursor to that part, and then the Scan option will be displayed. Click on Scan to start scanning. The scanning process will take a while, but be patient for that to get the best scanning results.
Step 2. Find and preview the files you want to recover
After finishing scanning, all the data in the lost partition will show up. Finding the files without category can be time-consuming. Here are two functions to help you find the target files more quickly. They are the Filter and Search features.
Filter: There is generally a sea of scan results after scanning. You can use this feature to classify files by file type, modification date, file size, and file category. It is in the upper-left corner. Using it to find the files is an effective way to save time.
Search: You can find files by inputting the keywords of the file name in the search box and pressing Enter. The corresponding files will be displayed. But remember that the keywords should be the same as the parts of the target file name. If not, the files cannot be found.
After finding the target files, you should make sure that these files are not corrupted. Then, recovering them can become meaningful. There is a feature called Preview which allows you to preview files before recovery. It is also in the upper-left corner next to Filter. Select a target file and then click on Preview to preview it.
Step 3. Choose and save the target files
If there is no problem with your target files, you can select them all and click on Save. When the Select a directory to save files window pops up, choose a location to store files and click on OK. Then you will see the Recovery Completed window, and you can check if files are restored successfully and in the right location in your File Explorer.
Method 2: Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to Recover Lost Partitions
You can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover the data from lost or deleted partition. There is another choice you can recover the lost partition along with the data in it directly. MiniTool Partition Wizard is the best partition manager for Windows. The built-in Partition Recovery function of this good partition recovery software can help you find and recover lost partitions. Now download and install it to start recovering lost partitions.
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Here are the specific steps to recover lost or deleted partitions:
Step 1: Launch the MiniTool Partition Wizard software. When you enter its home page, choose the Partition Recovery option at the top.
Step 2: When a new window appears, click on Next to continue.
Step 3: In the Select Disk for recovery page, choose the disk you want to recover and click on Next.
Step 4: In the Scanning Range Settings page, select the scanning range: Full Disk (Scanning entire disk), Unallocated Space (Scanning free space only) or Specified Range (Scanning specified sectors) and click on Next.
Step 5: In the Scanning Method Settings page, choose the scanning method: Quick Scan or Full Scan, and click on Next.
- Quick Scan: It can restore your partitions if your lost partitions are continuous. If the program finds the lost or deleted partition, it will jump to the end of this partition and continue to scan other lost/deleted partitions.
- Full Scan: It will scan every sector of your scanning range. If Quick Scan cannot find your partitions, you can use Full Scan.
Step 6: In the Choose Searched Partitions page, select all partitions including the existing ones you want to recover and click on Finish.
Step 7: Back to the main interface, click on the Apply button in the lower-left corner to save partitions.
See Also: How to Recover Unallocated Partition With Data on It
Tips to Avoid Partition Loss in the Future
Partition loss can be serious. How to avoid partition loss? Here are some suggestions.
- Be careful during partition management. Disk data writing or partition management processes should generally not be interrupted. When you are performing disk management, make sure your computer has sufficient power and is running smoothly without any sudden freezes.
- Install anti-virus software on your computer. Anti-virus software can effectively resist virus invasion to keep your computer in a safe state. Thus, the probability of partition loss due to virus attacks will be greatly reduced.
- Update your Windows system. You should update your Windows OS and the installed software regularly. Your computer can get some benefits from security patches and error fixes, which will decrease the risk of system crashes and errors that could potentially result in partition loss.
- Back up the partition regularly. If you don’t know how to back up partitions, you can use professional data and disk backup software, MiniTool ShadowMaker, to back up partitions. Then, when there is a problem with the disk partition, you can restore data from the previously saved backup.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Bottom Line
After finishing reading this article, you must have learned about some of the most common reasons for losing a partition and the files on it. Also, it is clearer how to avoid this event.
Losing important data from your lost partition can be very stressful and overwhelming. We believe the two MiniTool tools mentioned above can help you a lot.
If you have any questions about these two software, contact us via [email protected].
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Chelsea graduated from university with a major in English. She has a strong interest in English writing. It is this passion for writing that led her to become an English editor. Her articles mainly foucus on data recovery and other computer industry news. As an energetic and outgoing girl, Chelsea enjoys listening to music, singing, riding bikes, and eating in her spare time.