Comprehensive Guide: Lost Volume Recovery in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

If you accidentally deleted/lost volumes

Since you are searching about lost volume recovery, it is reasonable to assume that you have accidentally deleted/lost volumes on hard drives.

Then an unallocated space was created. You were urgently seeking help to recover unallocated partition.

No matter how you have made that happen, and what type of partitions you have lost, you need a feasible solution urgently.

No worries, this is an article that aims at guiding you to figure out some info and solutions about partition recovery.

To offer a practical guide to assist you, it is necessary to specify your scenario: after you have deleted/lost volumes, can you boot your computer?

If a data partition/recovery partition/MSR partition is lost, there won’t be any abnormal symptoms – you just find the partition is missing and invisible in Disk Management;

But if you have deleted a partition that has system files, bootloader, etc. installed within, then it is a big problem – the computer won’t boot.

For example, if you have deleted or lost an EFI partition, then you cannot get access to Windows. And thus you need to restore deleted EFI partition in Windows 10.

Thus, relevant solutions to these two situations are detailed below, check them out.

How to perform lost volume recovery?

How to recover lost volumes? Different methods should be taken depending on whether the PC is bootable.

To dig deeper, you may have deleted/lost a data partition, a recovery partition, or an MSR partition. Don't worry, even if you mistakenly deleted the recovery partition or MSR partition, you can easily recover it.

The only thing you need to specify, is the status of the computer – is it bootable or not? It is relatively simple to get lost partitions back if Windows is accessible;

If you have deleted the partition, now won’t boot, you have to get the computer bootable first. Go straight to Case 2, please.

Case 1. Computer is bootable - recover lost volumes that store data

No matter how you have lost your volumes, the very first course of action is to stop any write-in actions, otherwise, the data in the deleted/lost partition will be overwritten, and cannot be restored anymore – lost volume recovery will be a mission impossible.

• Do not add more files or items to the drive.
• Never try formatting or reformatting the disk.
• Do not create more partitions from the unallocated space.
• Do not try to rebuild the MBR.
• Never reinstall the system.

Now please follow the methods here to restore lost volumes.

Method 1. Recover lost partitions via CMD

Command Prompt could be utilized if you just found the volumes missing but didn’t perform any deletion.

Notes:✎...

This method is very limited because it only applies to the partition loss due to drive letter loss.

Step 1. Run Command Prompt as administrator > input “diskpart” in the interface.

Step 2. Input “list disk” to view all the drives.

Step 3. Input “select disk m” to select the drive which contains the lost volume. Replace “m” with the real number of the drive.

Step 4. Input “list volume” to check all volumes on the drive.

Step 5. Find volume which doesn’t have a drive letter > input “select volume n”. Replace “n” with the real number of the volume.

Step 6. Then input “assign letter = x”. Choose a letter different from all the existing letters.

Thus you could successfully realize lost volume recovery.

Method 2. Recover deleted partitions efficiently

If you have deleted a partition, then CMD is not suitable for your situation. But a professional partition recovery utility could be of great help.

AOMEI Partition Assistant, designed by the leading enterprise in the data recovery industry, could help you recover deleted partitions from HDD/SSD/SD card/USB flash drive in a breeze.

Easy. It provides an intuitive and simple user interface, helping users to operate it easily.

Efficient. It scans the hard disk for deleted volumes within inly several minutes.

Compatible. It supports Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista, etc.

As long as no overwriting occurs, users could perform lost volume recovery effortlessly, and with the data intact.

Now download AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro Demo to try a free trial.

Notes:✎...

It supports Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP OS, Windows 7 users could also recover Win 7 lost partitions with ease. 

If you are using Windows Server, you could upgrade it to Server Edition to get help. 

“Fast Search” could locate the deleted partition quickly; “Full Search” scans your drive sector by sector, and correspondingly, it cost more time.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant > go to “Partition recovery wizard” > select the drive which contains the lost volume > click “Next”.

Step 2. Choose a search method. Try “Fast Search” first, if it doesn’t work, try “Full Search”.

Step 3. Select the lost volume you need to recover > “Proceed”.

Thus you could easily have lost volume recovery realized.

Case 2. Computer won’t boot – recover lost volumes that store boot/system files

If unfortunately, you accidentally deleted partition now won’t boot, the lost volume recovery won’t be that easy.

Perhaps you have accidentally deleted EFI partition, which contains the bootloader and firmware's boot applications.

Firstly, you need to make a bootable device to boot your computer, then recover lost volumes.

Here, you could also trust AOMEI Partition Assistant. As a versatile tool, it is embedded with lots of awesome features, including helping users make bootable media, create/merge/format/recover/split/convert partitions, etc.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant on another bootable PC > connect a USB drive > “Make Bootable Media” > “Next”.

Step 2. Select “USB Boot Device” > “Proceed”. The USB will be formatted, please make sure you have backed up or transferred the data in it.

Step 3. Plug the USB to the unbootable PC > head over to “Partition Recovery Wizard” > select the drive which contains the deleted volume > “Next” > choose search mode > get the deleted volume back.

Thus you could have everything back to normal, and have carried out lost volume recovery securely.

Related suggestions

This article is about how to perform lost volume recovery under different situations: computer bootable and unbootable.

If bootable, just utilize Command Prompt or a much easier tool – AOMEI Partition Assistant to recover lost volume; if deleted partition now won’t boot, make bootable media to get access to the Windows, and then recover the deleted/lost partition.

Partition deletion/loss happens every moment, but not every user has the luck to get problems fixed. So some related suggestions are attached here.

• Do not delete any partition if you are not aware of the result.
• Make a backup before deleting partitions or data.
• Keep your storage devices running in a clean and tidy environment.

To back up data and partitions smartly and flexibly, try AOMEI Backupper, which provides useful features like “Disk Backup”, “File Backup”, “System Backup”, and so on.

For those who want to restore deleted data from hard disk volumes, they could utilize a trustworthy Windows data recovery software - MyRecover.

This tool is equipped with awesome scanning methods to locate deleted or lost data on hard drives, which can help you recover lost data within only 3 steps.