NTFS Partition Recovery-How to Recover Deleted or Lost NTFS Partition

About NTFS partition loss

NTFS (New Technology File System) becomes the mainstream for Microsoft's Windows operating systems to store users' data because of its overall benefits. This standard file system is for Windows NT, Windows 2000, XP, Windows Server, 2008, Windows Vista Windows 10, and Windows 7.  

NTFS is primarily optimized for Windows to increase speed, performance, disk space use, reliability, etc., compared to alternative file systems such as FAT or HPFS.

Unfortunately, even contemporary file systems like NTFS have their disadvantages. NTFS file systems may still be damaged. You may delete the NTFS partition by accident or the partition gets lost for kinds of reasons, so how to attempt NTFS partition recovery?

Common causes of NTFS partition loss

With the wide use of NTFS partitions by more computer users, the possibility of NTFS partition loss would increase accordingly. Normally, NTFS partition loss is caused by the following main four reasons:

All of the above reasons could lead to computer hard disk partition loss. However, after users found the partition is missing, is it possible to recover NTFS partition in Windows 11/10/8/7?

Is it possible to recover the NTFS partition in Windows 11/10/8/7?

The answer is yes. The NTFS partition and data can be recovered. After the NTFS partition is deleted or lost, it will be marked as an Unallocated space in Disk Management and become inaccessible. The entire partition can be recovered in some cases.  Unless you reformat the partition, then you can reuse it, which means all data on the partition will be erased clearly. 

The chances of success depend on how long the partition was deleted or lost and what drive has been used. Stop using the drive until the data are recovered. In this case, you’d better use a reliable partition recovery tool-AOMEI Partition Recovery Wizard to restore the entire deleted NTFS partition. Before attempting NTFS partition recovery, you'd better not do the following:

Do not reformat the partition or hard disk.

Do not make any new operations on the disk.

Do not add any new items to the partition.

Do not rebuild the partition table.

How to recover NTFS partitions without losing data

When your NTFS partition suddenly becomes unallocated space, you need to perform NTFS partition recovery right away. To recover deleted or lost NTFS partitions in Windows 11/10/8/7, AOMEI Partition Recovery Wizard would be your best helper. Or you can try Command Prompt to assign a drive letter to the lost NTFS partition.

Method 1. Recover lost partitions with the NTFS partition recovery tool

AOMEI Partition Recovery Wizard, a built-in utility in AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, is created to restore lost or deleted partitions including FAT, NTFS, Ext2, Ext3, and Ext4 in Windows. With the easy-to-use interface, two scan modes, and high success rate, AOMEI Partition Recovery Wizard won a lot of reputation from users.    

AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional
As an outstanding disk manager, there are many utilities collected in one software to manage the internal hard disk and external hard disk with no effort.
✦ Partition Manager: create partitions, delete partitions, format partitions, change drive letters, shrink partitions, extend partitions.
✦ Converter & Wizards: convert MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, move partitions, clone partitions, merge partitions, format large hard drive (over 32GB) to FAT32, and allocate free space from one partition to another.

To recover deleted NTFS partitions in Windows 11/10/8/7, you can follow the detailed steps below. You can download the demo version first.

Step 1: Install and open AOMEI Partitional Assistant Professional. Select Partition Recovery Wizard on the left panel.

Step 2: Click the disk you want to recover. Then click on “Next”.

Step 3: Select a search mode. It is recommended that you select Fast Search the first time. If it doesn’t work then you can try the Full Search option.

Step 4: Select the lost NTFS partition and click on “Proceed”.

Step 5: Click on “Finish” to exit the window when you see the congratulations message.

After performing NTFS partition recovery, you can go to Windows File Explorer to check whether the lost or deleted NTFS partition is restored. If you did not make any new operations on the NTFS partition since it is deleted and lost, the data will also be recovered and accessible again.

Method 2. Assign a drive letter to the NTFS partition via Command Prompt

The lack of a drive letter will make the partition not recognizable by the NTFS file system or operating system. If your partition is marked with an asterisk in Disk Management, use Command Prompt, a Windows built-in tool, to assign a drive letter to the lost partition. This method requires users have a certain understanding of the Command line.

Step 1: Press “Win + R” on your keyboard and type “diskmgmt.msc” in the Run window to open Disk Management. (If a partition is deleted or lost, the volume will be marked as Unallocated or with an asterisk. Remember the partition size.)

Step 2: Press “Win + R” and type “CMD” to Run CMD as administrator.

Step 3: Type the following prompt and press Enter after every command line.

diskpart

list disk

select disk # (Replace # with the number of the hard disk that contains the lost partition).

list volume

select volume # (replace # with the number of the lost partition).

assign letter=# (Replace # with an available drive letter, from C to Z).

How to recover deleted files from NTFS partitions?

If you find only some files are missing in the NTFS partition, and you don't have available backup files, how to recover lost files? It's recommended to use a professional data recovery tool-MyRecover.  It's a powerful and user-friendly tool for everyone to restore deleted or lost word documents, Excel Sheets, PowerPoint, images, videos, zip files, and others from hard drives, external hard disks, USB drives, SD cards, etc. Only within 3 steps, the deleted files will come back. Download this freeware to recover deleted files from NTFS partitions. 

Step 1. Hover the mouse over the NTFS partition saved deleted files before, and click Scan.

Step 2. The software will scan the NTFS partition quickly to find deleted files. You don't need to wait for the scanning process to end if you find the deleted files in the scanning result. 

Step 3. After scanning, you can search the file names and filter the scanning result. When you locate the deleted files, you can click "Recover XX files" and then save them to another folder. 

Summary

So, the bottom line here is, to use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional to perform NTFS partition recovery. Hopefully, this post has explained the methods you need. If the NTFS partitions are lost or deleted, AOMEI Partition Wizard helps you to recover them.  Now it is your turn to try on this partition recovery software.

In addition, the best way to avoid partition loss is to regularly create a full image backup of the system and important files with a reliable backup tool-AOMEI Backupper, or in an external hard drive.