The goal is to determine the critical parameters of the deleted/damaged/overwritten partition and after that enable to scan it and display its content. You can do it manually using Disk Editors and some guidelines or use recovery software, designed for this purpose. The goal is to find out the problem and write some information to the proper place on HDD and after that partition becomes visible to OS again. Under 'Partition recovery' we mean two things: In this case you have less chances to restore your data in compare to the case where OS is not bootable due to the missing or corrupted system files, however recovery software usually uses some tricks to display may be not all but some of the entries that are still safe and allow you to save your data to another location. However, if the file system itself is damaged (Root, FAT area on FAT12/FAT16/FAT32, or system MFT records on NTFS) drive's content might not be displayed and we might see errors like 'MFT is corrupted', 'Drive is invalid'. If so, OS can read partition/drive parameters and display drive in the list of the available drives. Partition/Drive can be found via Partition Table.In this case recovery software accesses this drive on the low level bypassing system boot (for example, if you boot from another HDD or bootable floppy) and will help you to see all other files and directories on the drive and allow you to copy to the safe place onto another drive.įor the partition/drive to be visible to the Operating System the following conditions should apply: However, if these files are missing or corrupted then OS will be unbootable - remember the famous error 'NTLDR is missing. ) depending on the file system type on that partition. If so, executable code in MBR selects an active partition and passes control there, thus it can start loading proper files (COMMAND.COM, NTLDR. Partition Table exists and contains at least one active partition.

Master Boot Record (MBR) exists and is safe.Clusters chain recovery for the deleted entryįor the machine to be able to start booting properly, the following conditions should apply:.Defining clusters chain for the deleted entry.Partition is deleted or Partition Table is damaged.User Guide: How to recover NTFS Step by step guide with examples

Starus NTFS / FAT Recovery 4.8 instal