Partition table is responsible for storing information of partitions on the disk by the operating system. Therefore, if it gets corrupted, various terrible matters will occur. This article will expose the 5 most common symptoms of partition table damage.
So-called partition table is just a table stored on the beginning of disk to save the related information of partitions on this disk, such as size, number and type. All of the information is supporting the hard disk’s proper working. Also, whenever you try to access a file, system will first access the corresponding partition table. Therefore, as long as the partition table gets corrupt, various problems will occur, such as partition loss or data corruption like PST corruption. Now we will unveil the 5 most common ones to you.
1. Unprovoked Partition Loss
First of all, the most common one must be that any partitions suddenly disappear without telling you in advance. In Windows-based computer, you can access the Disk Management, in which you can see that the total number of original volumes is decreased. It means that you are suffering partition loss.
2. System Boot Failure
Moreover, in case of partition table corruption, the operating system will refuse to boot up as normal. In other words, system will fail to boot. Also, at times, you may receive various error messages showing up in the black screens, such as “Missing Operating System”, “Error Loading Operating System”, “Bad or missing partition table” or “Invalid Partition Table” and so on. In this case, generally, you need to check your computer BIOS settings to see if the drive is visible in BIOS.
3. Can’t Access the Partition as Normal
In addition, provided that you fail to access any disk partition, it’s very likely that the partition table is corrupt. Generally speaking, in this scenario, you’ll get various error messages like “Access is Denied”, “A Disk Read Error Occurred”, etc.
4. Partition Overlap
Furthermore, there is a case usually known as “Partition Overlap”, which also can result from partition table corruption. So-called “Partition Overlap” means that the total storage capacity of all partitions and free space exceeds the real capacity of the physical disk. In this case, some partitions may overlap with each other. It may lead to a problem that writes to one partition can damage the other one, too. Plus, it is worth mentioning that getting the total storage capacity requires you to count manually. The Disk Management will not identify and show such partition overlap.
5. Sudden System Halts with Errors on Windows Blue Screen
Supposing that partition table gets corrupted unexpectedly and seriously, your operating system may tend to get terminated abruptly. It refers to sudden system halts. In general, the Windows screen will turn to blue totally with a text error on it.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com