Recovering files from deleted partitions

If you deleted a partition and even reallocated disk space for other partitions, you still can try to restore files that were on the deleted partition. Handy Recovery can find information about deleted partitions on the disk and will allow you to restore files from them.

Click the "Find Partitions" button on the toolbar. In the dialog choose the physical disk on which you want to find lost partitions. You can also choose the search range. This is useful if you know approximately where was the beginning of the partition that you want to find. It can take a while to search the whole disk, but you can save time by limiting the range.

Click "Ok". Handy Recovery will start searching for lost partitions. When a new one is found it will be added to the list shown in the dialog box. When you see the needed partition you can click the "Stop" button or double-click the partition in the list.

All found partitions will be added to the list of drives in the top left corner of the main program window. Now you can work with them as with usual drives.

To see files on a partition, select it in the list and click the "Analyze" button on the toolbar. Now you can view and restore files as usual.

During the search you can save partitions information to a file. This file will store information about the allocation and size of all found partitions. It will not store data located on the disk, like disk image file. You can load partition information later from the "Find lost partitions" dialog box.

Note that if you format a drive using full format procedure, it will be impossible to recover any files from it, because full format removes all information from the disk.

If you format an existing partition with quick format option, you do not need to search disk for this partition as described above. You will see files that were on the partition before formatting along with the current ones when you analyze the partition as an existing logical drive.

The search for partitions is applicable only if you want to find an old deleted partition that does not coincide with any existing partition.