When you find that a hard drive partition somehow disappears, what should you do then? You can adhere to the following 7 do’s and don’ts in this article, which can help you cope with this issue effectively.
Generally speaking, when a drive partition disappears without warning you, it may indicate two cases. One is that the driver letter assigned to this partition is missing somehow. The other one is that this partition is lost, which is much more complicated and troublesome than the former one.
However, no matter in which cases, you will be no longer able to access the data on this partition. In that case, you will try various means to recover the lost data, such as to recover PST data, word document and so on. In this recovery process, if you do anything improper, your data will give you a permanent farewell. Thus, in order to avoid human errors, you had better comply with the following 7 do’s and don’ts.
1. Check Disk Management
Now that partition disappearing can come from two situations, you have to verify which case yours is. Thus, you need to check disk management on your PC firstly. On Windows, you can go to “Control Panel” > “Administrative Tools” > “Computer Management”. Then, in the “Computer Management” dialog box, open the “Disk Management”. Next in the central screen, you can check if the partition is there or not.
- If the partition is there but without a drive letter: Just reassign a drive letter to it.
- If the partition is not there: You are suffering partition loss. Now move on to the following dos and don’ts.
2. Stop Any Operations on the Hard Drive
As soon as you realize partition loss, you should stop doing any operations on the hard drive. It’s because that not only operation will cause data overwrite but also if you do anything wrong, it may lead to further losses.
3. Never Try Unreliable Recovery Methods
When encountering the frustrating partition loss, most users will search helps on the internet. There are multiple suggested tips available on the web. However, it is advisable that you should never try unreliable recovery techniques. Otherwise, further damages on the hard drive will be caused.
4. Don’t Format the Hard Drive
There are many recommendations that the hard drive can restore to its normal status after a successful disk formatting. Nevertheless, this is actually wrong idea. You should not format the drive after partition loss as disk formatting will cause loss of the important information which is required for partition recovery, then causing partition recovery impossible.
5. Don’t Rely on Partition Table Rebuild Completely
Perhaps you know that partition loss commonly result from partition table loss or damage. Hence, many will tend to rebuild the partition table to try to make the lost partition to show up again. However, the means is not almighty. If you do it in unsuitable situations, it can make case worse. Therefore, do not rely on partition table rebuild thoroughly.
6. Recur to Trustworthy Partition Recovery Tool
There are multiple related partition recovery tools in the today’s market. Hence, you can resort to a reliable and powerful partition recovery tool. You should keep cautious when selecting such a tool as there are too many unreliable ones, which can make your partition recovery more complicated and even impossible.
7. Ask Data Recovery Professionals for Help
Provided that you have little knowledge about partition recovery, you had better resort to data recovery professionals. Like the recovery software, there are many such recovery services available too. Therefore, if you can afford it, seeking help from experts is recommended.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including fix mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com