A hard disk partition is a space on a hard drive that can be formatted with a file system. A user may settle on splitting the hard drive to organize data more efficiently or for creating a multi-boot or dual-boot configuration. Partitioning is done commonly while installing operating system.
Errors during partitioning, results in deletion or loss of partitions. The Master Boot Record (MBR) and optionally several Extended Partition Pointers (EPPs) are used to hold information about how many volumes present on the physical disk, and where they are located. Corruption in any of these may cause partition loss resulting in deletion of data. Other error that you might come across is “Invalid Partition Table” this is when you switch on your computer, the system examines the master partition table to determine what volume to use to boot up the operating system, and detect invalid information within it. This is caused by an incorrect or missing active partition.
A common belief about deleted partition among most of the computer users is that it is lost forever or the data present in it is lost forever, however this just a misconception. Deleted partition is marked as unused space and previous data still exists. Partition information is stored in the partition table, a reserved area present in the hard disk. When a partition is deleted, in general, only its partition table entry is removed from a table; and although the data is no longer accessible, some still remains on the disk until being overwritten. Operating system may crash resulting in disappearance of important files or a partition may miss out and user might not see the partition in Windows Explorer.
Deleted partition results in loss data or make the data inaccessible. Some of the other reasons that results in data loss are as follows;
- Virus attack: Viruses can be transmitted over a network. They can duplicate from one system to another and can also replicate through storage medium. Virus may delete the data, in severe cases it may also result in partition loss.
- Emptied recycle bin: you may delete some files and later empty the recycle bin, hence clearing the file from the system
- Change in File System: In a computer, a file system is the way in which files are named and where they are placed logically for storage and recovery. Change in file system from FAT to NTFS results in data loss.
Recovery of files is usually a relatively simple process when compared with recovery of partition, since the size of the feedback is considerably smaller. Partition recovery involves the procedure in which the user must recover deleted partition or sometimes even a lost partition from his hard disk drive. All that we need to do is pick partition recovery software to carry out deleted partition recovery. While installing the software, make sure the affected partition is not used to install the software. Any further usage of the partition may overwrite the data and make it practically impossible for any software to recover it. Remo Recover (windows) is one of the best recovery software that can be used to perform effective deleted data recovery.