The structure describing how your drive is divided occupies a few hundred bytes at the very front of it. Damage those and the operating system reports an empty disk — not because anything moved, but because the map has gone. The territory is all still there.
$ mdr diagnose /dev/sdb → Device: Seagate HDD (2 TB) → Status: PARTITION LOST — drive reads as RAW → Client: confidential · Manchester M2 $ mdr engineer-working → Read-only image: taken · source untouched → Partition table: rebuilt + remounted → File system: structure intact · files visible $ mdr verify → ✓ documents — 14,210 files → ✓ photos — 21,540 files → ✓ partition recovered — files back
Windows and macOS both respond to an unreadable partition table by offering to fix it, and both fixes involve writing a new one over the old. The data is intact behind those few hundred bytes — until something replaces them.
Disproportionate consequences for something so small, and that is exactly why this recovers well.
At the start of every drive sits a short structure describing how the space is divided: where each volume begins, how large it is, and what file system it holds. That is all. On a 4TB disk it occupies a fraction of a single sector, and everything else on the drive is your data.
Lose or corrupt that structure and the operating system has no idea there is anything there. It reports the drive as unallocated, RAW, or simply the correct size with nothing on it — because as far as it can tell, that is true. Not one byte of your material has moved. The map is missing, not the territory.
Different messages depending on the operating system and what exactly went missing.
The reconstruction relies on the fact that file systems announce themselves.
Every file system writes a recognisable signature at the start of its volume — NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, APFS, HFS+ and ext all have distinctive boot sectors or superblocks. Scanning the imaged drive for those markers finds where each volume actually begins, regardless of what the missing table used to say.
From there the volume size is derived from the file system’s own records, a corrected partition structure is rebuilt in the image, and the volume mounts. Where the boot sector itself is damaged, most file systems keep a backup copy elsewhere on the volume — NTFS at the end, ext in the superblock copies — and the volume is rebuilt from that instead. All of it happens on a copy, so nothing is ever written to your original.
A logical fault on healthy hardware, which is the cheapest kind of problem to have.
A single drive is from £300 +VAT, fixed after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with most jobs no fix, no fee. Where the drive is mechanically sound these are among the faster recoveries we handle — often a couple of days rather than a week.
If the drive is also making noise or has started failing, say so. The partition work is unchanged but the imaging comes first and takes longer, and you should know that before the timescale surprises you.
Get the device to us with a short note on what happened. The diagnostic that follows costs nothing, and the figure that follows it is fixed in writing before any work begins.
Nothing can begin until the device is on the bench, which makes this the only step that needs anything from you. Pack it properly, put your details in with it, and send it over. What follows is a free diagnostic and a written figure, in that order.
Posting it? Use something tracked and insured — whatever is on the drive is worth considerably more than the postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm, and it still wants packing as above for the journey.
Tell us what the device is, what it is doing, and anything already tried — an engineer will come back with a realistic view of the odds and a price band, before you commit to posting anything.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
What people most often ask about recovering a lost or missing partition.
Almost certainly not. Unallocated means the partition table describing where volumes begin has been lost or corrupted, and that structure is a few hundred bytes at the very front of the disk. Everything else is untouched.
No, and this is the most important thing on this page. That offer means Windows cannot read the partition structure — formatting writes a new empty one over the top, replacing exactly what a recovery would rebuild from.
Interrupted resizing or partitioning, a failed dual-boot install, sudden power loss during a write to the start of the disk, malware, or a controller writing to the wrong place. Bad sectors landing on the table itself will also do it.
Usually, yes. Rebuilding the partition table and boot sector makes the volume mountable again with its file system and folders as they were — unlike carving, which returns files without names or structure.
Slightly. RAW means the partition was found but the file system inside cannot be identified — usually boot sector damage. Most file systems keep a backup copy elsewhere, so the volume is often rebuilt from that.
From £300 plus VAT for a single drive, fixed after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with most jobs no fix, no fee. On healthy hardware these are among the quicker recoveries.
A free diagnostic, no fix no fee on most jobs, and lost-partition recovery off any drive, stick or card — every file back intact. Begin your recovery today.