If any hard drive partition gets lost, the data on it will definitely become lost as well. In order to effectively prevent drive partition loss, you should figure out the reasons behind it. This article will expose the 8 top causes of this issue.
Perhaps your hard drive is divided into several partitions. Actually partitioning a drive has many benefits. For instance, it can greatly improve the performance of a disk. Also, it can help us to better store and manage our files in order according to our own requirements. However, sometimes, we may lose partitions.
When a partition is lost, we will find that the data on it also disappear. In that case, you’ll leave no stone unturned to perform data recovery, like PST recovery. In reality, the partition loss is much more tough and complicated than common data loss. Thus, it is also more tedious to retrieve the lost partition. So as to avoid drive partition loss more effectively, you ought to make clear its causes. Hence, here we’ll unveil the 8 most common ones to you.
1. Partition Table Loss or Damage
Partition table is responsible to display the partitions to users. Thus, it is vitally significant. However, meanwhile it is also susceptible to corruption. Therefore, if the table become somehow corrupt’ or lost, it’ll lead to partition loss. Of course, you will be unable to read or write data on this volume.
2. Mistaken Partition Deletion
To be honest, human mistakes are unpredictable and inevitable in some degrees. Thus, when managing your hard drive, you may delete a partition by mistake or use diskpart to clean a wrong disk or do other incorrect operations in disk clean. In a nutshell, the accidental deletion can result in partition deletion too.
3. Improper Partition Resizing
Furthermore, you can adjust the size of drive partitions. However, this procedure is actually quite risky and susceptible to error. Therefore, if something wrong occurs in this course, such as improper operations or sudden interruption, the partition can get lost. Thus, if you don’t have sufficient knowledge about this operation, you had better not do it yourself.
4. Bad Tracks/Sectors
A hard drive platter is divided into several tracks and each track is separated into several sectors. If a sector cannot be read or written as normal, such a sector is called bad sectors. If the sector/track is physically corrupt, the entire drive will die. However, if only the sector/tack failed logically, only the bad sector/track will be escaped when reading or writing data. Thus, if there are many bad sectors on a partition, the partition will be unavailable.
5. Unexpected System Shutdown
If your system frequently shut down unexpectedly, not only will the computer malfunction but also the internal hard drive will suffer. There are many factors which can lead to the unanticipated system shutdown, like abrupt power outages, abnormal BIOS upgrading or mistaken application installation. In this course, the partition can get missing.
6. Operating System or File System Corruption
Like the above reason, if your operating system or file system gets corrupt, the hard drive will not be able to function as normal. Under this circumstance, the partition may disappear unconsciously.
7. Virus Infection
Nowadays, virus and malware are becoming increasingly complex and advanced. In addition, they are designed for various kinds of purpose. Moreover, at times, it is quite difficult to detect and kill them in time by our antivirus software. Thus, if our hard drive gets virus infected, partition can be deleted readily.
8. Run CHKDSK after Disk Defragmentation
So as to improve hard drive performance, you may run disk defragmentation on a regular basis. It will make your files organized contiguously. Nevertheless, if you run any scandisk tool, like CHKDSK on Windows-based computer, as soon as disk defragmentation completes, the hard drive structure will get corrupt and then result in serious partition loss.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including mdf recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com