Recover Data from Hard Drive Unallocated Space

I have a 1TB WD hard disk drive which was divided into 3 partitions to store my personal files and games. Today I found that one of the partitions is missing and the space is shown in Disk Management as unallocated space. I cannot access my files anymore! Does this mean I have lost all these files? Is there anything I can do to recover data from unallocated space?

What Is Unallocated Space?

A computer describes any physical storage space that doesn’t belong to a partition as unallocated space. When setting up a new computer, we will partition the unallocated space on hard drives into different partitions and assign drive letters to each of them. Without allocation, we will not be able to use the space on the drive.

You can separate a single hard drive into several partitions. A partition is a region of the hard drive that is separated from other regions. By dividing the hard drive into segments, the operating system can manage them separately. This reduces the general data loss risk as the failure of one partition will not have negative effects on other partitions.

Is Recovering Data From Unallocated Space Possible?

If due to various reasons (virus attack, accidental deletion, etc.) an existing partition is lost, we cannot access the data stored on that particular partition anymore. But it doesn’t necessarily mean these files are lost forever. Data are essentially clusters of 1s and 0s that are represented by physical substances. For hard disk drives (HDD), magnetized cells and demagnetized cells represent 1s and 0s respectively, while for solid state drives (SSD), the absence and presence of electrons represent 1s and 0s.

Data are essentially clusters of 1s and 0s that are represented by physical substances. For hard disk drives (HDD), magnetized cells and demagnetized cells represent 1s and 0s respectively, while for solid state drives (SSD), the absence and presence of electrons represents 1s and 0s respectively. These are non-volatile memories which mean in order to make the data gone forever, one has to go through extra efforts such as HDD degaussing or SSD resetting. Simply put, logical errors such as accidental deletion or lost partitions can hardly do actual damage to the real data. However difficult it might seem to people with little technological background, recovering data from unallocated space can be achieved quite easily, provided that you acquire the right tools.

How to Recover Data from Unallocated Space?

You can free download H Data Recovery Software to retrieve inaccessible files from unallocated space with only a few clicks. Follow the step-by-step guide provided below:

Step 1. To recover data from unallocated space, install and launch H Data Recovery Software and select the Hard Drive Partition module.

Step 2. Select the hard drive which contains the unallocated space. Click Next to proceed with the scan. The scanning process may take a while as the software will locate and collect every file that is stored in the lost partition.

Step 3. When the scanning is complete, you can choose from the listed files and save them to your desired safe destination. You can use the filter and search bar to quickly pin down the files you want.