How to Recover Deleted Volume on External Hard Drive?

External hard drives are small, portable, and convenient. People use external hard drives as important data/file storage devices or backup devices. To store different types of data, and out of convenience, external hard drives are divided into several parts.

Generally, we call it partitions or volumes. Some users will set a partition to store data, another to save backups, etc. However, you accidentally deleted volume in Disk Management and don't know how to recover deleted volume on external hard drive.

If you are experiencing a similar issue, don't worry about it too much, since inadvertent deletion is not a rare case among external hard drive users. And this article will offer you an effective method to fix it.

Accidentally deleted volume in Disk Management

Can a deleted volume be recovered?

Answer: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

You may find the external hard drive not showing up after deleting volume, and if you go to the Disk Management tool, you may find it becomes unallocated. At this time, some users, perhaps, are going to format it, or try to recreate a new partition.

Attention please, this is very dangerous for your deleted volumes and data! Because the data will be logically deleted when you delete a partition in Disk Management, and the space left will be marked as “unallocated”, waiting for new data to overwrite.

Vice versa, the deleted volume can be recovered as long as no more operations are done to the external hard drive after deletion. Then, you can choose to perform unallocated partition recovery.

Matters related to your recovery rate

If you want to recover lost partition on external hard drive with the data in it kept, these are of vital importance.

• Do not try to reformat the unallocated space.
• Do not add more files to the deleted volume.
• Never try to rebuild the partition table.
• Do not try to create new partitions.
• Do not use the “assign letter” command to give a name to the volume.

In a nutshell, please stop using the external hard drive right after deletion. You can then follow the tutorial below to perform lost volume recovery.

Tutorial: Recover deleted volume on external hard disk

Some users may take risks to utilize CMD to recover their deleted partitions, like the “assign letter” command, but it is useless when your volumes are deleted but not missing – it can only apply to partition loss due to drive letter loss.

In fact, to perform volume recovery on an external hard drive safely and fast, you might as well rely on a professional and trusty partition recovery tool.  

AOMEI Partition Assistant is the second-to-none choice – it can recover deleted partitions within 3 simple steps. With an easy user interface, all users can handle it. As long as no data overwriting happens, all data in the deleted volumes will be kept intact.

Equipped with advanced scanning methods, it can scan the external hard disk for deleted volumes from HDD/SSD/USB/SD card, etc.

Moreover, as compatible software, it can perfectly work with Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP OS, Windows 7 users can get missing partition in Windows 7 back easily.

Now, don’t hesitate to enjoy the amazing features of AOMEI Partition Assistant with a free trial.

Notes:✎...

“Full Search” scans your external hard drive thoroughly, and correspondingly, it costs more time than “Fast Search”, please wait patiently. 

When detected the deleted partition, File System, Capacity, Flag, etc. can be checked on the panel. 

If you are using Windows Server 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012, and so on, you could upgrade it to Server Edition.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant > click "Recover" & “Partition recovery wizard” > select the external hard drive > click “Next”.

Step 2. Choose a search mode. “Fast Search” is recommended for the first time.

Step 3. Select the deleted partition you need to recover> “Proceed”.

Then wait for the software to process, and you will recover lost partition on external hard drive successfully.

What if the files on external hard drive not showing up?

If your lost files are not recovered completely, you still can try a reliable data recovery software like MyRecover to scan the external hard disk for data recovery.  

Its Quick Scan & Deep Scan will thoroughly scan your disk and find all the recoverable files, such as pictures, documents, videos, audio, etc., over 200+ file types. 

It applies to all-inclusive data loss scenarios, such as lost or deleted partitions, formatted disks, recycle bin recovery, virus attacks, etc., and even system crashes.

Now, download data recovery software -MyRecover to have a try!

Step 1. After loading the external disk, hover the mouse over it and click "Scan".

Step 2. It will run the Quick Scan & Deep Scan methods to scan every sector of your external disk and display all the recoverable files.

During the process, you can search the file name or filter your lost files by file type, date modified or size.

• Type: It will contain all the file types in the local drive, such as images, videos, documents, mails, webpage, compressed files, etc.
• Data Modified: It supports today, yesterday, last 7 days, last 30 days, and custom.
• Size: It allows you to filter file size from less than 128KB to 128KB ~1MB to 1MB ~ 512MB and above, or custom.

Step 3. Select your lost files and click the Recover x files button. You will then be asked to select a location to save the recovered files. Please select a new location to prevent data overwritting. 

Bonus tips to prevent future loss after recovery 

You may not want to experience the external volume not found issue again. This will make you feel desperate, but it depends on how valuable the data is. 

Sometimes, the deletion is inevitable due to human error. But we can take some precautions to protect your data. One of the best effective methods is to backup files on external hard disk or directly backup the entire disk.

To save your time and labor, turning to excellent backup software for Windows is a sagacious choice. AOMEI Backupper, a trusty freeware, can be a good helper in keeping your data safe.

Conclusion

How to recover deleted volume on external hard drive in Windows 10 or 11? The best way is to use a powerful partition recovery software - AOMEI Partition Assistant. Its Partition Recovery Wizard will scan your disk for lost partition and allows you to recover deleted volume in simple steps.

In addition, if there are any data loss, try to scan this partition for data files with MyRecover, a reliable data recovery software. It's designed to recover deleted or lost files in different data loss scenarios, such as lost or deleted partition.

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