Recover Data Lost By DiskPart Clean – You Can Do It

Content:

• DiskPart Clean Performed Accidently
• Recover Data Lost by DiskPart Clean & DiskPart Format
• How to Recover Data Lost by DiskPart Formatl
• Delete partition & Initialize Disk with DiskPart
• 2 Other Ways to Format/Delete Partition
• To Sum up
• Related Articles
• User Comments

According to research, laundry lists of users have had the experience of encountering low disk space. In this case, some of them choose to delete unnecessary files and programs manually, some of them choose to depend on disk defragmenter, while others take DiskPart clean into consideration.

It's hard to tell which method is the best one. In fact, there's no absolute answer for this type of question since the circumstance differs from person to person.

DiskPart Clean Performed Accidently

All of those methods seem practical, right? But have you ever thought of one question – what if you delete valuable files accidentally. What are you planning to do to make up for your mistake?




Here, we would like to focus on wrong DiskPart clean and provide some useful suggestions for you all to recover data lost by DiskPart clean. Read them carefully, and you'll be able to find back all files with ease before they're overwritten by new data.

A Specific Case of Accidental DiskPart Clean

"I was running win 7 with 4 partitions, one (partition A) only for OS. Later, I thought to upgrade to win 8.1. While installing it didn't allowed me to install on any partition cause it want the partition in GPT. I thought i can run diskpart clean on one particular partition, so I selected one volume (partition) and ran clean command, but it still cleaned all the partitions."
– by 1mran5haik at Tom's Hardware

1mran5haik said he thought DiskPart clean could be applied to only one partition, but the result turns out that he was totally wrong – all the partitions are gone. Now, he needs to recover data from cleaned partitions.

Stay Calm, We Can Retrieve Data after DiskPart Clean

Don't be knocked down. You've still got chance to get back files deleted by mistake. And we'll offer 2 solutions to cope with DiskPart clean data recovery in different cases; those solutions are said to have helped many people get rid of the annoying data loss issues.

Now, download MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition V7.0 if you have finished DiskPart clean by mistake or you have chosen the wrong disk to clean. Considering that the size of data in cleaned drive is likely to exceed 1GB, we advise you to buy a personal license with a discount here.

Recover Data Lost by DiskPart Clean & DiskPart Format

You can see from above case, once DiskPart clean command is performed to a disk, all partitions and data will be deleted permanently. So if users run the DiskPart clean command accidentally, they are suggested to make use of the "Lost Partition Recovery" module of MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover data.

I used this tool to effectively recover lost data after diskpart clean.



However, if you used the DiskPart format command, instead of clean, only the selected partition will be formatted. To recover data in this case, you should choose "Damaged Partition Recovery" module.

How to Recover Data from DiskPart Clean Command

Step 1: open MiniTool Power Data Recovery to see the main interface, in which 5 different functional modules are displayed. Then, click on "Lost Partition Recovery" to start.



Step 2: select the disk which is cleaned by DiskPart and press "Full Scan" button in the lower right corner to start a full scan.

Note: if the cleaned disk is a removable disk, please connect it to computer now and press "Refresh" button in lower left corner to refresh the disk list (of course, you can choose to restart Power Data Recovery directly).

Step 3: when the full scan is over, all possible partitions and data that could be found in this selected disk will be displayed in the result interface of this file recovery software. And now, just browse the found data to check all the files & folders you need, and then press "Save" button & choose another disk to store those them.

After all of them were saved to the chosen disk, users can go there to check. If all needed data are recovered, you can close the software and put an end to data recovery after DiskPart clean. If there're still some data waiting to be rescued, you could repeat this process.

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How to Recover Data Lost by DiskPart Format

Step 1: you also need to open MiniTool Power Data Recovery and choose "Damaged Partition Recovery" from main interface.



Step 2: you should select the partition which is formatted by DiskPart and press "Full Scan" to start to detect files and folders in it.

Step 3: at the end of full scan, you also should look through the found data carefully to pick out all needed ones. And then, save them out to another drive by tapping "Save".

Delete partition & Initialize Disk with DiskPart

You may have heard a lot about Windows DiskPart, but do you know exactly what it is and how to use it to achieve simple disk management? Now, we'll show you the brief introduction and how to delete & format partition with this Windows built-in tool.

How to Start

Please start diskpart.exe by using the following ways:

a) Click on the Start button -> choose "Run" to see the corresponding dialog -> type "cmd" and press "OK" -> type "diskpart" and press "Enter" in keyboard.

b) Just press the Windows + R keys in the keyboard at the same time to open "Run" dialog -> type "cmd" into the textbox after "Open:" -> click "OK" to confirm -> type "diskpart" into cmd.exe -> press "Enter" key to confirm.

c) Input "cmd" into the "Search programs and files" textbox after clicking on Start button -> right click on "cmd" from the result -> choose "Run as administrator" -> type "diskpart" and press "Enter" key to confirm.

d) Click on Start button -> click on "All Programs" -> open "Accessories" -> click on "Command Prompt" -> type "diskpart" and press "Enter" in keyboard to confirm.

How to Delete Partitions to Re-initialize Disk

Step 1: open Windows Disk Management to determine the number of disk you're going to clean partitions from, in order to prevent any error clean.

Step 2: just choose a way to start diskpart.exe as we suggested above.

Step 3: when "DISKPART>" appears in the windows, you need to type "list disk" and then press "Enter" button in keyboard. At the end of those actions, all disks in the computer or connected to the computer will be listed out in order.



Step 4: Type the command "select disk *" and press "Enter"; "*" stands for the number of the disk you'd like to clean.

Note: again, we'd like to emphasize the importance of choosing the exact disk you want to work with in this step. The disk number, status, size and other information are displayed at this time for you to define the correct disk.

Step 5: type "clean" and press "Enter". Then, DiskPart will finish this task automatically.

Once this action is done, you're given no chance to regret because DiskPart will delete all partitions and data from this disk immediately and you can't suspend the process.

At the end of DiskPart clean, you'll see a prompt saying "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk". Now, you can exit and end the disk re-initialization task.

But if you still want to check the result, you could type "list disk" again and press "Enter" to see if the free space of cleaned disk equals to its capacity. Or you can just check it in the Windows Disk Management.

Note: if you want to clean the disk on which your operating system is running, you can only make this done in DOS environment.

How to Format a Partition with DiskPart Tool

If you want to format a drive to prepare it for data storage or change the file system of a drive, you can also choose DiskPart tool rather than "Format" function of Disk Management.

Step 1: go to check the disk number and the specific drive letter of partition you plan to format. Then, open DiskPart.

Step 2: at this time, cursor will be placed right after the item "DISKPART>" and you should type "list disk" and press "Enter" to see disk layout.



Step 3: now, you can type command "select disk *" (* represents the exact disk number you can see from disk layout) and press "Enter". When this action is completed, DiskPart will give you a prompt saying "Disk * is now the selected disk".

Step 4: type "list partition" and press "Enter" to see the partition layout of the disk you selected just now. Then, DiskPart will show you all the partitions in selected disk with related information, like partition type, partition size and offset.



Step 5: in this step, you're supposed to type "select partition *" and press "Enter" to select the partition you want to format (also, * represents the exact partition number). After that, "Partition * is now the selected partition" will appear.



Step 6: type "format" and press "Enter" again. And you'll see the completed percent is changing automatically. When the percent becomes 100, another prompt will appear – "DiskPart successfully formatted the volume" – to inform you that the format process is done.

Now, you can click the red "X" in the upper right corner of Command Prompt window to close it or just type "exit" and press "Enter" to leave DiskPart. Since format will remove all your data from the certain partition, you also need to consider seriously before actually formatting the operation.

Note:
1. It does not mean that users have no chance to recover partition after DiskPart clean or DiskPart format. Just use the data recovery software for Windows we've introduced at the beginning of this article to recover data lost by DiskPart clean and DiskPart format eaisly.

2. DiskPart also provides many other commands to help you manage disk & partitions better.

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2 Other Ways to Format/Delete Partition

You should know that DiskPart is not the only choice when you need to format a partition or delete all partition on a disk. There're also many other ways; now, we'll show you the most commonly used 2 ways.

Format a Partition with Disk Management

Step 1: open Windows Disk Management:
Click on Start button to see the Start Menu -> choose "Computer" and right click on it to see submenu -> select "Manage" -> choose "Disk Management" under "Storage" option which is listed in the left panel of "Computer Management" window.

Step 2: format partition:
Right click on the disk partition you'd like to format -> choose "Format" -> set "Volume label", "File system" and "Allocation unit size" in Format window according to needs -> click on "OK" to confirm.

Note: the method to delete partition in Windows Disk Management is similar; you just need to remember to choose "Delete Volume", instead of "Format".

Format a Partition with Partition Wizard

The following tutorial will show you how to do exactly:

Double click Partition Wizard icon and choose "Launch Application" from the welcome page -> select the target partition -> click "Format Partition" under "Operations" -> set "Partition Label", "File System" and "Cluster Size" if you need (you can also keep them unchanged) -> press "OK" button to confirm -> tap "Apply" button from upper left corner and choose "Yes" from pop-up window to execute.

Also, the method to delete partition with Partition Wizard is similar (you should select the target disk and choose "Delete All Partitions" instead).

To Sum up

DiskPart is a great tool to help us achieve basic disk management operations. But you need to think twice before using DiskPart commands to make changes, since a tiny mistake will result in a huge problem. Besides, the commands may be too complex for ordinary users, so you may tend to make mistakes when you're not careful enough. What's more, once the process is started, it can't be paused or canceled.

Yet, you don't need to be too depressed after mistake was made. It's not impossible to recover data lost by DiskPart commands. You can use the methods we've mentioned to rescue your data and please don't worry, it will not cause any further damage to your disk.

All in all, no matter you want to recover lost disk or partition in Windows, MiniTool Power Data Recovery could be your best assistant. If you doubt this, you may as well try the free edition first to experience its power and then you can decide whether you'd like to buy a license or not.