Partition Recovery: Recover Lost Partitions and Data

Accidentally hitting the wrong button or experiencing a power outage can result in an entire partition disappearing, along with all files that were stored on it. Is there a way to undelete it and get your files back? There is! You can recover a deleted partition using the Disk Drill partition recovery software.

partition recovery software

Why Does a Partition Get Lost or Deleted?

Here are the main reasons why partitions get lost or deleted:

Accidental deletion

Accidental deletion

Let’s face it: all hard drives look more or less the same, and the non-descriptive names Windows assigns to them don’t help prevent accidental formatting.

Partitioning error

Partitioning error

Not all partitioning software is user-friendly, intuitive, and reliable. With the wrong solution, it’s easy to make an error and cause a partition to become inaccessible.

Power failure

Power failure

A sudden loss of power can interrupt important data transfer processes and compromise the integrity to such an extent that an entire partition disappears.

OS update

OS update

Every year, many users around the world lose one or more partitions after performing a major OS update, such as upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

Partition table corruption

Partition table corruption

All information about partitions and their structure is stored in a small storage area, whose corruption can lead to serious issues.

Hardware failure

Hardware failure

All storage devices have limited lifespans, which can shorten dramatically when exposed to excessive heat, humidity, or vibrations.

Malware

Malware

Certain strains of malware attack partitions and the data stored on them. What’s more, cybercriminals are always perfecting their techniques and making malware harder to detect.

Firmware issues

Firmware issues

Storage device manufacturers have released devices with faulty firmware a number of times in the past, and not all users managed to update before losing a partition.

Quick Way to Recover Data from a Partition

Have you deleted an important partition and lost access to all data that was stored on it? With the Disk Drill partition recovery software, you can quickly and efficiently regain access to your files. These and many other features make Disk Drill the best partition recovery solution available:

  • Support for all commonly used Windows, Mac, and Linux file systems Support for all commonly used Windows, Mac, and Linux file systems.
  • Robust signature file recovery capabilities to deal with RAW partitions Robust signature file recovery capabilities to deal with RAW partitions.
  • Modern and intuitive graphical user interface with a clean layout Modern and intuitive graphical user interface with a clean layout.
  • Advanced scan session management with the option to pause/resume Advanced scan session management with the option to pause/resume.
  • The ability to preview lost files from missing partitions The ability to preview lost files from missing partitions.

How to Recover Your Lost Partition Data

Before you begin your recovery efforts, it's imperative to prioritize the safety of your existing data. We strongly recommend creating a byte-to-byte backup of the affected drive using Disk Drill’s free backup feature. With your data securely backed up, you can proceed with the recovery process with confidence.

1. Download and Install Disk Drill

The Basic edition of Disk Drill lets you undelete up to 500 MB of data, and you can download it for free. We recommend you install Disk Drill on a completely different storage device (not just a different partition) than the one you’re trying to recover to minimize the wear and tear on it as much as possible.

Download and Install Disk Drill

2. Scan Your Storage Device

Disk Drill is easily the best partition recovery software for Windows. It can recover deleted or lost partition on Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11 and earlier with its advanced filtering options and reliable recovery mechanisms. Launch the partition recovery software and select the entire storage device with the lost partition (a lost partition won’t be listed at this stage, so it’s not possible to scan it directly). You can then click the Search for lost data button.

Scan Your Storage Device
!

Note: Disk Drill can recover data even from unallocated partitions. Such partitions are displayed with other partitions in the Storage devices section, so selecting them is easy. Still, it’s usually better to scan the entire storage device anyway so that you don’t miss anything important.

3. Wait Until Your Partition Is Found

During scanning, Disk Drill automatically applies its sophisticated recovery algorithms in the optimal order to deliver the best results possible as quickly as possible. Lost partitions are found during the Deep Scan phase, and they’re shown directly below an overview of recoverable files. Thanks to its support for RAW hard drive recovery, Disk Drill can recover data even from partitions with no file system. As a user, you can click on any found partition to view all files that can be recovered from it. Should the application fail to find any lost partitions, we recommend you let the scan finish anyway and then look in the “Deleted or lost” group.

Wait Until Your Partition Is Found

4. Select Your Lost Partition Data

Next, you need to go through the list of recoverable files and click the checkbox next to each file you want to recover. Whenever you select a file, Disk Drill will attempt to generate a preview. If a preview can be generated and the file seems intact, its recovery will almost certainly be successful. Are there too many recoverable files to go through? Then you can narrow them down using the filters in the top toolbar or the left pane. For example, you can display only files with High recovery chances.

Select Your Lost Partition Data

5. Recover Your Partition Data

Once your missing partition files are all selected, you can click the Recover button in the bottom-right corner. Disk Drill will prompt you to specify a safe recovery location (must be on a different storage device and have enough storage space). Finally, a recovery completion message will be displayed, together with a button to show recovered data in File Explorer.

Recover Your Partition Data
!

We recommend you proceed to thoroughly check the health of your hard disk drive (HDD) once the lost partitions have been successfully found and all data has been restored. The first step in this process involves employing diagnostic tools such as Victoria 911, which is designed to scan the HDD's sectors for any errors. In addition, it’s a good idea to regularly check the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) data of your HDD. You can do this using Disk Drill’s S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tool.

Recover All File Types from Lost Partitions

Disk Drill can recover hundreds of file types from lost partitions, allowing you to effortlessly get back all important documents, images, videos, and more. You can recover all supported file types at once or focus only on a single one.

Archives
Archives
ZIP (Extended Zip File), 7Z (7-Zip Compressed), CAB (Windows Cabinet File), RAR (WinRAR Compressed Archive), DMG (Mac OS X Disk Image)
Audio
Audio
AIFC, AIF, AIFF (Audio Interchange File), MP3 (MPEG Audio Stream, Layer III), WMA (Windows Media audio files)
Documents
Documents
PPTX (Microsoft PowerPoint), XLSX (Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet), DOCX (Microsoft Word), PDF (Portable Document Format)
Images
Images
BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSP, JPEG, JP2. Polaroid/Sigma: X3F. Pentax: PEF. Adobe: INDL, INX, AI, INDD, LRCAT, PSB, APM, IDML, INDB, PSD.
Video
Video
MPG (MPEG video), AVI, FLV (Flash video), MP4 (MPEG-4 video), WMV (Windows Media Video), M4V (iTunes video)
Other Files
Other Files
SQL (bundled SQL queries), ACCDB (Microsoft Database), OTF (OpenType Font), DB (Paradox), MYO (MYOB Limited Windows File)

Recover a Deleted Partition Data from Any Device

All storage devices rely on partitions to create one or more storage regions, so it’s important to select partition recovery software capable of performing deleted partition recovery from any device.

PC / MacPC / Mac
PC / Mac

Dell®, HP®, Acer®, Asus®, MacBook Pro®, MacBook Air®, Apple iMac® and more

HDD / SSD*
HDD / SSD*

HP®, Samsung®, Seagate®, Toshiba®, WD®, LaCie®, Intel®, Adata® and more

USB Drive
USB Drive

SanDisk®, Samsung®, Kingston®, Corsair®, Patriot®, PNY®, Verbatim®, Silicon Power® and more

SD / CF Card
SD / CF Card

SanDisk®, Transcend®, Toshiba®, Lexar®, Integral®, SP®, PNY®, Kingston® and more

Digital Camera
Digital Camera

Samsung®, HP®, Sony®, GoPro®, Canon®, Sigma®, Nikon®, Epson®, Panasonic® and more

Storage Arrays
Storage Arrays

RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID10, JBOD, and Windows Storage Spaces

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* If TRIM is disabled. Learn more >

Restore Data from Any Partition Type

No partition type is fully immune to data loss, which is why Disk Drill can recover all partition types commonly used today, including:

PC partition types

PC partition types

The most common PC partition types found inside a master boot record (MBR) or a GUID Partition Table (GPT) include NTFS, FAT, FAT32, and exFAT.

Master boot record (MBR)

Master boot record (MBR)

MBR is a legacy partitioning scheme used to organize partitions, often of different types, on a storage device.

GUID Partition Table

GUID Partition Table

GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a modern standard for the layout of partition tables, widely supported by all operating systems, including macOS, Windows, and Linux. For more information, read our guide on how to recover a GPT partition.

Primary partition

Primary partition

Traditionally, a primary partition is the hard disk partition where the operating system is located. However, it can also contain user data, just like a non-primary partition can.

Logical partition

Logical partition

A logical partition is a separate storage area that can’t host an operating system. Logical partitions are typically used to store data away from the operating system.

Extended partition

Extended partition

This type of partition is essentially a container that can store one or more logical partitions. It’s possible for an extended partition to span the entire available storage space.

DOS, Windows, and OS/2

DOS, Windows, and OS/2

On these operating systems, there’s one primary partition with system files. By default, Windows 10 and earlier this partition is assigned the letter C.

Unix-like systems

Unix-like systems

All Unix-like file systems support multiple partition types on the same storage device. Sometimes, users give each primary directory its own partition to minimize data loss.

Multi-boot and mixed-boot systems

Multi-boot and mixed-boot systems

It’s possible to install two operating systems on the same hard drive by giving each operating system its own partition.

Partition Recovery Success Rate Estimations

Data recovery chances can vary greatly depending on what kind of data loss situation you’re trying to solve. Less serious causes of data loss, such as accidental deletion can typically be solved without information loss, while more serious causes, such as hardware damage, may be impossible to solve at all.

The following overview of common data loss scenarios should give you at least some general idea of what your data recovery chances are:

Formatted storage device

Formatted storage device

When you format a storage device using the Format option in Windows, the formatted storage device isn’t actually overwritten. Instead, it’s only marked as empty, but all files are still physically present exactly where they were and can be recovered using data recovery software. If you act quickly, you may even be able to recover entire lost partitions.

Securely erased storage device

Securely erased storage device

Unlike regular formatting, the secure erase feature present in many data recovery and partition management software applications overwrites the entire formatted partition with new data. Once the overwrite process is completed, recovery of the original data becomes impossible. The only scenario in which recovery might be feasible is if the secure erase procedure was interrupted before it could finish.

Partitioning gone wrong

Partitioning gone wrong

When working with partitions, a lot can go wrong and cause partitions to disappear. The good news is that their recovery is often possible using freely available software applications.

Malware infection

Malware infection

Some malware infections are easy to recover from because they only affect file metadata, but other infections, such as ransomware, may be impossible to recover from even with the best tools and techniques.

Data corruption

Data corruption

From a sudden power outage to software, data corruption can have a lot of different causes. Depending on its extent, the corruption may be reparable using the tools present in Windows.

Hardware damage

Hardware damage

Arguably the most serious cause of data loss, hardware damage almost always requires expensive professional equipment and advanced skills to fix, and the results are never guaranteed.

!

The growing proliferation of solid-state disks (SSDs) is making it more difficult to accurately estimate data recovery chances ahead of time because some SSDs enable the so-called TRIM command by default. This command causes deleted data to be physically removed from the storage device, making it irrecoverable.

cleverfiles PROTECT

Free Partition Recovery – Prevent Data Loss

The best and most cost-effective recovery method is active protection against data loss! The Recovery Vault protection and restoration mechanism guarantees the safety of your data on FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT file systems. It keeps track of all erased files and it saves the on-disk location of deleted files to enable quick and easy file recovery from partitions when needed.

how to recover deleted partition

Supported File Systems

Disk Drill supports all commonly used Windows, Mac, and Linux file systems, and it can also perform RAW partition recovery:

Operating System Supported
Windows File Systems

FAT16/FAT32/exFAT, NTFS/NTFS5

OS support
Mac File Systems

HFS & HFS+, APFS

Universal Partition Search
Linux File Systems

EXT2/EXT3/EXT4, BTRFS

Technical Specifications

Operating System Supported
Operating System Supported:

Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP
Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012/2008
View system requirements

Hardware Requirements
Hardware Requirements:

Disk Space: 1GB minimum free space
CPU: 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) compatible CPU 1.0 GHz or faster
RAM: at least 4GB

Stable release
Stable release:

Disk Drill 5
Version: 5.7.917

Other Methods to Recover a Lost Partition

In some cases, it’s possible to recover a deleted partition without installing additional software. We'll cover straightforward methods built into Windows and demonstrate how to restore lost partitions. We'll also introduce third-party tools like TestDisk and Linux-based solutions, which offer advanced options for more complex recovery scenarios.

Method 1

Assigning a New Drive Letter

A partition may appear to be lost if it doesn’t have a drive letter assigned to it. Fortunately, you can easily assign a new drive letter using the Disk Management utility:

  1. Press Win + X.
  2. Select Disk Management.
  3. Locate the missing partition and right-click it.
  4. Select the Change Drive Letter and Paths option.
  5. Click Add and pick a suitable drive letter.
  6. Confirm.
Assigning a New Drive Letter
Method 2

Scan the Storage Device with TestDisk

TestDisk is a handy application that can recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again. Best of all, you don’t even need to install it on your computer thanks to its portable nature. You can simply extract the downloaded archive and launch the executable inside.

  1. Download, extract, and launch TestDisk.
  2. Choose if you want TestDisk to create a log file.
  3. Select the storage device with the missing partition.
  4. Select the partition table type.
  5. Analyze the current partition structure.
  6. Select the found partition.
  7. Save the new partition table.
How to Repair a Partition Table on Windows
Scan the Storage Device with TestDisk
!

Warning: TestDisk writes backup partitions directly to drive, so make sure you have created a byte-to-byte backup of the entire drive first should anything go wrong.

Method 3

Access the Partition from Linux

Just because you can’t access a partition from Windows doesn’t always mean the partition is deleted. It’s possible that the partition is simply using an unsupported file system. That’s why we recommend you boot into a live Linux environment and attempt to access it from there.

  1. Download a Linux distribution like Ubuntu.
  2. Create a bootable USB drive with the Linux distribution.
  3. Boot into the Linux system.
  4. Attempt to access the missing partition.
  5. If successful, recover your files by moving them to a safe location.
Access the Partition from Linux
Method 4

Recreate the Deleted Partition Using fdisk

fdisk is a dialog-driven command-line tool for managing partitions. The program supports GPT, MBR, Sun, SGI, and BSD partition tables, and it's included in most popular Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint. To attempt deleted partition recovery using fdisk, you need to:

  1. Open fdisk by running the command sudo fdisk /dev/[device name] (replace [device name] with the name of the storage device on which the deleted partition was located).
  2. Create a new partition by using the 'n' option.
  3. Decide if you want to create a primary ('p') or extended ('e') partition.
  4. Select the partition number and the first and last sectors for the new partition.
  5. Use the 'w' option to write the changes to the disk.
Recreate the Deleted Partition Using fdisk
Method 5

Contact Data Recovery Professionals

While many DIY-style partition recovery solutions are readily available, including those described in this article, you don’t always have to recover lost data on your own.

If you’re struggling to achieve good data recovery results, then you should at least consider contacting data recovery professionals.

Leading data recovery companies have state-of-the-art equipment and dust-free facilities that allow them to recover partitions even from physically damaged storage devices—something that’s almost never possible at home.

Contact Data Recovery Professionals

The Best Partition Recovery Software in 2024

Most users become familiar with partition recovery software only when they desperately need it, which is one reason why choosing the right solution can be such a challenge. To help you make the right decision and recover all deleted partitions with minimal effort, we’ve put together a comparison chart that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the best partition recovery software applications available in 2024.

Disk Drill partition recovery software

Disk Drill

EaseUS Partition Recovery

EaseUS Partition Recovery

DiskInternals Partition Recovery

DiskInternals Partition Recovery

Acronis Disk Director

Acronis Disk Director

Recoverit Data Recovery

Recoverit Data Recovery

Usability
Price

$89.00 - PRO (never expires)

$499.00 - Enterprise (never expires)

$49.95 - Monthly

$69.95 - Annual

$99.95 - Lifetime upgrades

$139.95 - Personal

$219.95 - Business

$49.99 - For home
$79.99 - Workstation
$299.99 - Server

$79.99 - 1 Month license

$99.99 - 1 Year license

$159.99 - Lifetime license

Supported filesystems

FAT16 / FAT32 / exFAT / NTFS / NTFS5 / HFS / HFS+ / APFS / EXT2 / EXT3 / EXT4

NTFS / EXT3 / EXT2 / FAT32 / FAT16

FAT / HFS / NTFS / APFS / EXT2 / EXT3 / EXT4

FAT16 / FAT32 / NTFS / Ext2 / Ext3

FAT / exFAT / HFS+ / NTFS / APFS / EXT2 / EXT3 / EXT4

Restore lost partitions

Partial support

Partial support

Deep scan file recovery

Bad devices scan

RAW devices scan

Automatic scans

File labeling by meta-data

Files recovery chances prediction

Disk health monitoring (S.M.A.R.T.)

Disk backup tools

Data protection features

Convenient file-to-file preview

Preview with thumbnails

Built-in tutorials

Tips to Prevent Partition Loss

The availability of effective partition recovery software is not a good excuse for not doing as much as possible to prevent partition loss. The following tips can help you keep your partitions in good working order and your data safe:

Back up your data

Back up your data

You should always back up all important data because any storage device can suddenly fail, causing you to lose access to your partitions. If you want the ability to restore the entire storage device with its partition structure, complete byte-to-byte backups are the way to go.

Be careful during partitioning

Be careful during partitioning

A lot can go wrong during partitioning, so you need to be extra careful not to accidentally click the wrong button or miss an important warning message. If you have no previous experience with disk partitions, we highly recommend you start with an easy-to-use partition manager software with a graphical user interface.

Watch out for malware

Watch out for malware

Certain strains of malware can corrupt partitions and make the files stored on them unreadable. To keep them at bay, always use the most effective anti-malware solution available and make sure to keep it updated.

Remove drives safely

Remove drives safely

The integrity of certain file systems can be compromised by improperly disconnecting a storage device from the computer. That’s why you should always eject your storage device before you physically disconnect it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated on by Disk Drill Team

How to recover a lost partition in Windows 11?

To recover a lost partition in Windows 11, you should use a data recovery software application that’s fully compatible with the operating system. Disk Drill is an excellent choice, and using it is simple:

  1. Download and install Disk Drill on your Windows 11 computer.
  2. Launch Disk Drill and use it to scan the storage device with the missing partition.
  3. Wait for Disk Drill to find the lost partition and then click on it.
  4. Review found items and add all files you want to recover to your recovery queue.
  5. Click the Recover button and specify a safe recovery destination.
  6. Verify that your files have been successfully recovered.

How to recover a lost partition in Windows 10?

What is the best partition recovery software?

How to recover a deleted partition on Mac OS?

How to recover a deleted partition in Windows 7?

How to restore a lost partition using CMD?

How to recover a deleted partition in Linux?

How to recover a deleted partition in Ubuntu?

How to recover a deleted partition in Windows Vista?

How do I fix a corrupted partition?

How do I restore the HP recovery partition?

How do I boot to the Dell recovery partition?

What does lost partition mean?

Can I recover files from a deleted partition?

Can I recover a formatted partition?

Can I restore lost partition with Disk Drill software for free?

How to recover a lost partition from an external hard drive?

How do I recover files from a partitioned hard drive?

Recover deleted partition on Mac OS X and use free protection options of Disk Drill to never lose any data again

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