How to recover a lost partition of a hard drive

How to recover a lost partition of a hard drive


There are two major reasons you might not see the drive letter of your computer: the logic drive letter lose  or partition table corrupted.

Try these steps first:

• Go to the 'cmd' window by holding the "Windows" key and press the "R" key
• Type and run 'diskmgmt.msc'
• "Disk Management" will be shown.
• If see a partition without a drive letter then right-click on it
• Select "Change Drive Letter and Paths..." 
• Click on "Add" button
• Select the drive letter and Click on OK.

If you cannot see the partition without a drive letter, the partition table may be corrupt, try the TestDisk after the original instruction here or abstracted steps below:

• Download the TestDisk
• Unzip and save it on the USB drive
• Run "testdisk_win"
• At the first window, select “No Log” and press the key
• Select which drive to analyse, choose “Proceed” and press key
• Select partition type (select "Intel" if it’s a PC) then press key
• Select “Analyse” then press key
• Select “Quick Search” at the next screen, then press  key
• Press key, if the partitions were created under Vista – press key if not.
• TestDisk should say “Structure OK”. If so, press key 
• Select “Write” and press key and press   key to confirm.
• "ok" to reboot the compute, press key
• Now, close TestDisk and RESTART the computer.