While working on a Windows 7 machine, there are various situations where the partition appears to be invisible. Some of the reasons for invisible partitions are mentioned below.
- Blue screen error while working on Windows 7 often makes the partitions invisible. It has been seen that after the repair startup only the boot partition is visible.
- You might experience the situation in case of switching from an older operating system to Windows 7. However, you might see the partitions during the boot process.
- Partitions can also become invisible if you try to roll back your operating system from Windows 8 to Windows 7. However, you might see the drive while selecting the drive for OS and on disk management.
- Converting the partitions based on NTFS file systems to FAT 32 file system can also lead to partition deletion.
Note: With the evolution of NTFS file system, it is very unlikely to revert to an older file system like FAT 32. However, if required, that can be done through the inbuilt Windows utility. It requires you to format the system, which can be done through the snap-in disk management features of Windows. In any case, it stands a risk of partition and data deletion. - A Damaged Master Boot Record (MBR) damages the partition table. The MBR contains code to start the boot process, and it gets created along with the first partition.
- Damaged partition table can modify the information about the primary partition and the extended partition.
- If the first sector of the partition gets damaged, the file system would not be able to use the information to access the volume. The first sector partition is the boot sector partition.
- Files like NTLDR, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini might get corrupt or lost. These files are the boot files and are responsible for the Windows to boot.
In addition to the above-mentioned reasons, there could be many other reasons for missing or lost partitions. However, there are several techniques that can be tried to get back the lost partitions.
Solution
Many times the exact reason for an invisible partition is not known. However, you can still try the below steps.
- You can try unhiding the hidden files that might have got hidden at the time of reinstallation. This can be done by navigating to the Control Panel > Folder > Options > View.
- Try rescanning the disks by following the below-mentioned steps.A. Right-click on ‘My Computer‘ and click ‘Manage.’
B. Click ‘Disk Management’ by scrolling down to Storage section.
C. Right-click the ‘Disk Management’ and select ‘Rescan Disks‘. - You can also try assigning the drive letter to the drive by following the below-mentioned steps.A. Right-click on Computer from the Startup icon menu and select Manage.
B. Select ‘Disk Management’ from the Computer Management window.
C. Right-click on the drive and select ‘Change Drive letters and paths’.
D. Select Add and assign the drive letter. - In case the system is having a missing or damaged NTLDR, damaged boot sector, or damaged MBR, you can create recovery disk using the ‘Backup’ utility option of System Tools.
- You can run the ‘Recovery Console’ using various command line utilities. A Windows bootable disk can be used to run the Recovery Console by choosing the repair and C option.
- Various partition tools can be sued to repartition the hard disk. Fdisk tool can be used to create, modify, delete, or display current partitions on the hard drive.
Note: In case you are not able to access the partition, and you have your important data in it, try using the Custom Installation option while reinstalling the OS. This would store all your data in Windows.Old folder. You can easily recover all your data from this folder afterward.
There are various other techniques and solutions that can be tried to recover data from an invisible hard drive. However, the recommended solution is to make use of a professional and reliable hard disk partition recovery software. There are many Windows data recovery software that can be used.
Recommend software to recover data from lost partitions
If none of the above-mentioned solution works, you must try Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery tool is an efficient and reliable partition recovery software. The software is capable of recovering lost or deleted data from various systems based on Windows operating system. You can use this tool to recover data from any externally attached media to the system.