External hard drives are widely used now but they are not immune to data loss and device errors. You might mistakenly delete a partition on your external hard drive, causing it to disappear from the File Explorer and Disk Management. Can you recover a lost partition on an external hard drive? Of course, you can recover the lost partition as well as the data stored on it.
I am trying to recover a deleted NTFS partition on an 8 TB HDD. The disk was partitioned as a whole and did not have multiple partitions. I tried to use testdisk and it found the partition, but when I recovered it it made a 2TB partition with 6TB as unallocated. Is there a better tool I can use? I'd rather not do a raw recovery of such a large volume... - u/Dragonvirlreddit.com
Part 1: Recover Data from the Lost Partition on an External Hard Drive
Once your partition on the external hard drive is lost, all the data stored in that partition will become inaccessible. If you need to recover files from this partition, only professional data recovery services can help you. You are advised to recover data before restoring the lost partition because the newly created one has the possibility to overwrite your data, causing them irrecoverable.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is highly recommended among numerous file recovery software. It has good compatibility allowing it to be downloaded and installed on all Windows systems. Additionally, this software can detect and recover files from different data storage devices in various scenarios, including lost partitions, formatted USB drives, unrecognized hard drives, and more.
It contains many other powerful features to improve the data recovery efficiency and accuracy. You can download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free to deeply scan the lost partition on your external hard drive and try to recover the wanted files.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
You can follow the next tutorial to recover data from the lost partition on an external hard drive with MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
Step 1: Provided you have successfully installed MiniTool Power Data Recovery on your computer, you can connect the external hard drive to the computer and launch the software.
You will enter the This PC interface automatically, where you can find all the partitions both on your computer and the external hard drive. Hover the mouse over the partition shown as Lost Partition 1 with a USB label under the Logical Drives section, then click Scan.
Step 2: It will take a few minutes to finish the scan process, depending on the number of files and partition size. You are not suggested to interrupt the scan process which will not find all your lost data on the partition.
On the result page, the found files will be categorized into different folders: Deleted Files, Lost Files, and Existing Files according to their paths before the partition was lost. Expand the corresponding folder to find your wanted files.
Furthermore, the other three features can help you locate files quickly.
- Filter: You can click on the Filter button to set the filter conditions, including file size, file type, file category, and file modified date. This feature can filter a large number of unwanted files out of the file list.
- Type: If you change to the Type category list, you can find files listed according to their types, like Picture, Document, Audio & Video, etc. You can recover a certain type of file effectively.
- Search: This feature works a lot when you remember the name of the wanted file. You can type its name into the search box and hit Enter. All the matched results will be listed. You only need to check the listed files not all the found files.
Certainly, to ensure the recovered files are what you need, you can use the Preview function to check files before saving them.
Step 3: Select all the files you want to recover and click on the Save button. Then, you should choose a proper storage path. You are recommended to store the recovered files on your computer or another data storage device since you will start to recover the lost partition on the external hard drive.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free provides 1GB of free data recovery capacity. If you choose more than 1GB of files, you will be prompted to update the edition. MiniTool Solutions develops different editions to meet different requirements. You can choose one that suits you best on this page.
Part 2: Restore a Lost Partition on an External Hard Drive
After recovering data, you can now try the following methods to do an external hard drive lost partition recovery.
#1. Recover Lost Partition on External Hard Drive Using MiniTool Partition Wizard
You can first try to use a professional partition recovery tool, like MiniTool Partition Wizard, to recover the lost partition. Partition recovery will not only restore the lost partition but also get the lost data back. MiniTool Partition Wizard is a comprehensive partition management tool with the ability to resize partitions, format partitions, wipe disks, and more.
You can get the free edition of this tool by clicking the download button below, then run it to detect the lost partition in your external hard drive under the instructions of the following steps.
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 1: Connect your external hard drive to the computer and launch the software.
Step 2: Click on the Partition Recovery button at the top toolbar and click Next.
Step 3: Choose the disk that contains the lost partition and click Next.
Step 4: You need to choose one Scanning Range based on your need and click Next.
Step 5: In the following window, there are two Scanning Methods: Quick Scan and Full Scan. You can choose Quick Scan first. If it can’t find the lost partition, then perform a full scan. After setting, click Next to start the scan process.
Step 6: All the found partitions will be listed on the result page. You can choose the partition you need on this page. Please remember to select both existing partitions and the partition needs to recover.
Step 7: Click Finish to recover the partition.
Step 8: When the recovery process is complete, you can preview the status of your external hard drive on the main interface. If every operation is correct, you need to click Apply to finish the suspending process.
After this, you can check whether the lost partition and data are successfully restored.
Additionally, you can try the next two methods to recover the lost partition by recreating it. The two methods will create a new partition on your external hard drive without restoring any data.
#2. Recreate a Partition on External Hard Drive Using CMD
If you are familiar with Command Prompt, you can run the Diskpart command lines to create the new partition. The Diskpart command line can be used to create, delete, merge partitions, and perform other operations. You can create a new partition on the external hard drive with the following steps.
Step 1: Press Win + R to open the Run window.
Step 2: Type cmd into the text box and press Shift + Ctrl + Enter to run Command Prompt as administrator.
Step 3: Type the following command lines and hit Enter after each one.
- diskpart
- list disk
- select disk x (replace x with the number of your external hard drive)
- create partition primary size=* (replace * with the size in MB you want the newly created partition to be. 1GB=1024MB)
- format fs=NTFS
- assign letter=* (change * to the drive letter of the newly created partition)
- exit
#3. Recreate a Partition Using Disk Management
The last method is to work with Disk Management, a Windows built-in tool. When you use this tool to manage partitions and disks, every change will be applied to the disk immediately. Thus, be careful when you work with it.
Step 1: Right-click on the Windows logo button at the left bottom, then choose Disk Management from the WinX menu.
Step 2: Right-click on the unallocated space to choose New Simple Volume. In the prompt window, click Next.
Step 3: Set the volume size and click Next.
Step 4: Choose a drive letter from the list and click Next.
Step 5: In the following window, you need to choose the file system, then click Next.
Step 6: Check all the information. Click Finish if everything is correct. Disk Management will format the partition automatically.
Part 3: Tips to Prevent External Hard Drive Partition Loss
It is normal that devices, like external hard drives, suffer from wear and tear during use. Various problems might occur when you use an external hard drive, such as the external hard drive being corrupted, not showing up, partition loss, etc. Here are some suggestions for you to protect your external hard drive and prolong its life.
- Prevent physical damage: Usually severe physical damage is unrecoverable which may cause data loss as well.
- Store the external hard drive in a safe environment: Keep the external hard drive away from high temperatures, high humidity, and dusty places.
- Properly connect and disconnect the external hard drive: You should safely eject the drive before disconnecting it.
- Do not fulfill the external hard drive’s storage space.
- Do not connect the external hard drive to public or untrusted computers.
Further Reading: Prevent External Hard Drive Data Loss with MiniTool ShadowMaker
Data loss usually happens to any of your data storage devices without any sign. You’d better back up files to more than one device; thus you can get files back easily from the previous backups. Some of you may bothered by the duplicated files after multiple backups. You can try professional backup software, MiniTool ShadowMaker.
This software provides three types of backups for you :
- Full Backup: Full back will copy all your data including the previous files and newly created files. This backup type will generate many redundant files and is time-consuming. It can be used to do the first backup.
- Incremental Backup: Incremental backup means to back up the changed and newly added files compared with the last backup.
- Differential Backup: Differential backup will back up the changed and newly added files compared with the first full backup.
You can also set the backup cycle to back up files automatically using this software.
If you need, you can download and install MiniTool ShadowMaker Trial to experience the backup features.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Part 4: Bottom Line
After reading this post, you should know how to recover a lost partition on an external hard drive. In order to successfully recover data from the lost partition, you’d better perform data recovery with MiniTool Power Data Recovery first.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Feel free to let us know your puzzles when using MiniTool software via [email protected].