The hard disk partition recovery test requires that you only answer a few questions, and the results will make certain you do not make an irreversible mistake, like indefinitely losing the partition table and data that you have already made disappear once.

Are you using a hard disk partition recovery tool in place of a data recovery software utility, so that you can revive a partition, reboot your system, and then be back in business? In other words, are you trying to avoid having to install an operating system on another storage device, boot from it, and then recover your data to it? If you have answered, "no" to either hard disk partition recovery question, you have passed, and can now go to paragraph three for stage two. If you are a "Yes" person, we need to talk...

Did you answer, Yes?

On the computer you are trying to perform hard disk partition recovery, is there any corruption within the file system? I am hearing, 'I don't know, but I don't think so.'; or, 'I never really thought about it. Why does that matter?'. If the computer is rebooted when asked, and any part of the file system is corrupt, you are going to lose a lot of data that you want to recover.

After many years of experience as a data recovery specialist, I have taken endless calls from people who have used hard disk partition recovery products, and have lost their data after rebooting from one. When they do this, and there is data corruption present data is destroyed. So, take the safest way in hard disk partition recovery by recovering your data to another drive.

Questions two and three

Are you using the computer that you are about run a hard disk partition recovery tool on? Are you thinking about downloading a hard disk partition recovery tool to the computer that has the problem? If you answered no to both questions, you have passed, and can fast-forward to question four.

If yes is your answer to either question, power down that computer right now; download the recovery tool elsewhere. And do not touch the problem computer again until the hard disk partition recovery process begins. I frequently encounter these mistakes when speaking with callers about hard drive partition recovery . In some cases, they are using the computer as we speak; they just don't know better.

When you lose or delete a partition table, it still exists at that moment, but cannot be recognized by the file system. What you have done from that point until now will usually determine whether that partition can be revived by a hard disk partition recovery utility.

If you have been using your computer a lot, saving documents, etc., the partition table may be toast. The reason being is, the operating system has denoted the partition table as unallocated space, and this area can be over-written by new data that is saved to the computer. Downloading a hard disk partition recovery software to the problem drive is an example of what could fill the place where your partition lies, making it unrecoverable.

Partition recovery to data recovery 

If the hard disk partition recovery software does not recover your partition, is there an alternative way to recover the partition? Unfortunately not, but you can still recover the files within that partition using data recovery software. Luckily, there are plenty of them, and hard disk partition recovery utilities available, not to mention disk recovery services.