How to recover files from the deleted partition

Often users divide a hard disk into multiple partitions — one partition is used for the operating system and another - for user data. Also, users can create multiple partitions for their data, for example, one partition is intended for work files and another - for personal files.

On various tech forums you can often find posts that a user wanted to reinstall the operating system and accidentally deleted the data volume, or a user was testing some disk space utilities and all partitions were gone. Or just some logical error has occurred that has corrupted the partition table stored information about volumes, such as:

  • partition name,
  • partition size,
  • where does the partition start and where does it end,
  • file system type.

Generally, if you cannot access a volume, there is no need to panic, as the chances of getting the data back are quite high.

The most important thing is not to create new partitions on the hard drive. The best solution is to do nothing with the drive from which you want to recover data, you can even disconnect it from the PC until you decide to start the recovery process. Next, you need to prepare the storage to which you will copy the recovered data. People don't always have a spare disk handy and you may have to buy one or borrow it from someone.

Recovering data from a deleted partition using ReclaiMe

  1. Download and install the ReclaiMe software.
  2. Launch ReclaiMe and take a close look at the volumes that are available for scanning. Since at this stage ReclaiMe simply reads the information from the partition table, you most likely will not see the deleted volume. However, there is one trick to make ReclaiMe display all volumes, including deleted ones. The trick is to run the software from the command line and use a special command.
  3. To launch ReclaiMe from the command line, click Start , then type cmd in the search bar. A console will open where you need to enter cd c: /, then on the line below enter cd program files, then below cd reclaime, then start reclaime.exe /partitions.
    4. cmd
  4. Once you do this, ReclaiMe will be run in the Find Partitions mode.
  5. Select the needed drive and click Find Partitions.
    6. Disk selection
  6. Wait a bit and select the partition for data recovery.
    7. Find partitions
  7. Select the found volume and click Start.
    8. Partition selection
  8. Wait until ReclaiMe starts displaying the recovered files. Please note that as soon as you receive a message that the initial scan has completed, you can start checking the quality of the recovery using the Preview function. If the size and number of recovered files matches your expectations, then you may not continue scanning, because most likely everything you need has already been recovered.
    9. File Preview
  9. Purchase a license key and start copying files to a spare disk. If you are recovering data from a Windows file system - FAT or NTFS, you need a Standard license. In the case of operating systems from Linux or MacOS, you need the Ultimate key.