[2 Ways] How to Recover Lost Partition on External Hard Drive

Can I recover partition from external hard drive?

External hard drives can also be divided into several partitions, such as internal hard disks, and used to store files and folders, such as music files. However, you may lose your data or partition for different reasons, such as accidental deletion, disk formatting error (e.g., you need to format the disk), virus infection, corrupted partition tables, etc.

Fortunately, it's possible to recover lost partition on external hard drive with one powerful partition recovery software - AOMEI Partition Assistant. The files on external hard drive will be recovered as well. In addition, your partition may not be lost, just the drive letter. In this case. you can try to assign a new drive letter for your partition to make it visible.

Recover lost partition on external hard drive using software

Although you can't see the lost partition in Disk Management or File Explorer,  it still exists on the external hard drive and can be recovered if you don't create a new partition with it. Meanwhile, please stop using this external hard drive to avoid data overwriting.

The easiest way to recover lost, deleted, or damaged partitions from an external hard drive is by using a professional partition recovery tool such as AOMEI Partition Assistant. It's embedded with the Partition Recovery Wizard and offers two advanced scanning methods - Fast Search & Full Search to scan your disk completely.

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✌ Fast Search: Scan your disk quickly and locate lost partition on external hard drive. This is the recommended method. 
✌ Fast Search: Scan every sector of your disk to find lost partition and corresponding take longer. Try this method when Fast Search fails.

Super simple but important tips 

Before you start recovering your partition, please keep the following tips in mind to avoid further data loss before recovering the partition and ensure great results:

Perform external hard drive partition recovery in 3 steps

To recover lost partition on an external hard drive via AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, follow the steps detailed below. You can download the demo version first.

Step 1: Download & install AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Select Recover > Partition Recovery at the top and click the disk containing the lost partition. Click on “Next” to proceed.

Step 2: Select a search mode. It’s recommended to choose Fast Search the first time as it takes less time than Full Search. Then, click “Next”. 

Step 3: Waiting for the search stage to end, the lost or deleted partitions will be listed. Choose the lost partition on external hard drive and click “Proceed”.

Wait patiently until you receive the message “the partitions have been recovered successfully”, and click “Finish” to exit. Then, check whether your lost partitions get back in Disk Management or Windows File Explorer.

More surprisingly, the data in the lost partition will be recovered as well. 

MyRecover

Sometimes, you may find files missing from the lost partition. Or you just want to recover deleted files on external hard drive. You can employ a simple & easy to use data recovery software like MyRecover below to get them back!

Download Software
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

Recover lost partition on external hard drive via CMD

If you can't see a partition in Windows File Explorer but it displays in Disk Management, it is likely this partition does not have a drive letter. In this case, you can choose to assign a drive letter using the Diskpart tool and make your lost partition visible again.

Step 1: Press “Win + R” and type “diskmgmt.msc” in the Run window to find the lost partition in Disk Management. If a partition is deleted, the volume will be marked as Unallocated. Remember the partition size.

Step 2: Press “Win + R” and type "diskpart", then hit the “Enter” key to open the Diskpart utility.

Step 3: Type "list disk" and hit Enter (Replace # with the number of the hard disk that contains the lost partition).

Step 4: Type "list volume" and hit Enter. You will see all volumes on the disk.

Step 5: Type "select volume #" and hit Enter (replace # with the number of the lost partition).

Step 6: Type "assign letter=#" and hit Enter (Replace # with an available drive letter, from C to Z).

Lost or deleted files from external hard disk? (Solved)

In general, your files on the lost partition will be recovered as well. However, sometimes, you may your files are still missing after performing partition recovery. Or your actual problem is accidentally deleted data on external hard drive instead of the lost partition.

Anyway, you can try simple & easy to use data recovery software - MyRecover, designed by AOMEI, the leading benchmark of the data security industry. Below are its outstanding features.

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✌ Cost-free data recovery up to 500MB.
✌ Embedded with advanced scanning methods, it is capable of finding all the recoverable files on external hard disk and recovering them completely, with a high success rate.
✌ Recover deleted or lost files due to accidental deletion, virus infection, lost partition, disk formatting, and more data loss scenarios.
✌Recover documents, audio, video, compressed files, emails and more, up to 200+ file formats. So you can use it to recover deleted PNG files, JPG/JPEG images, MOV videos, MP3 audio, Word documents, etc.
✌Highlight features like filter, preview, crashed PC recovery, and so on. Among them, the crashed PC recovery feature even allows you to recover deleted files from hard disk without OS.

Step 1: Install and launch MyRecover on your PC. Then connect your external hard drive to the computer properly. Open MyRecover and hover the mouse over the drive, click Scan.

Step 2: MyRecover will perform Quick Scan and Deep Scan automatically to find all the recoverable files and list them in the following window. Meanwhile, you can search or wait to see all the deleted and other missing files on your external hard drive.

For example, to recover deleted PNG files, click Filter and select Type > Image, then type .png in the search box to narrow down. Once found, double-click them to preview.

Step 3: View and choose the files you want to restore. Then click “Recover x files” and store them in a new saved path.

Conclusion

This post shared the top two easiest methods to recover lost partitions on external hard drives. You can avoid much frustration by mistakenly deleting the partition once you learn how to get the lost partition via AOMEI Partition Recover Wizard. This partition recovery software can help you solve other partition issues with powerful features as well.

If your files are still missing or your actual problem is accidentally deleted data on external disk, try simple & easy to use data recovery software - MyRecover to get your data back in 3 steps. It supports recovery of 200+ file formats, such as Word/Excel/PPT documents, MOV videos, JPG/PNG images, etc.

Of course, always backing up essential files in a secured storage device is the best way to keep your vital data safe. It's recommended to use backup freeware - AOMEI Backupper. It offers you different backup solutions, such as file backup, disk partition, etc., which you can choose according to your purpose.