How to recover D: partition after accidental deletion ?

I have Dell XPS 17 9710, with Windows 11 24H2

My disk was formatted as:

- OS (C:)
- DATA (D:)

But File Explorer shows only:

- OS (C:)

So it looks as if I've deleted D: in a senior moment.

To the best of my knowledge, I have not edited the disk in any way since I deleted D:

In Disk Management, I see the following partitions in sequence:

150 M Health
OS (C:)
182.86 GB Unallocated [I assume this was the D: partition. The size is correct.]
113 GB, etc

As far as I can remember, in the old days, deleting a partion simply meant that the address of the first sector in that partition was removed from the Directory. The partition then became "Unallocated", but the actual data would remain on the disk until it was overwritten by later operations.

So we used Norton's Utilities to edit the Directory by assigning the drive letter (D:) or anything except (C:), to the Unallocated area. So the Data partition once again becomes visible in File Explorer.

Is that still possible?

Or is there any way to recover data which is still on the disk.

It looks as if I've deleted D: in a senior moment.

To the best of my knowledge, I haven't edited the disk since I deleted D:

In Disk Management, I see the following partitions in sequence:

150 M Health
OS (C:)
182.86 GB Unallocated
113 GB, etc

In the old days, deleting a partition simply meant removing the address of the first sector from the Directory. The sector then became "Unallocated", but the actual data would remain on the disk until it was overwritten by later operations.

So we used Norton's Utilities (NU) to edit the Directory by assigning the drive letter (D:) or any letter except (C:), to the Unallocated area. So the Data partition once again becomes visible in File Explorer.

Thanks
.

This is a good tool for the job Partition Recovery and File Undelete
It can do partition discovery/recovery and if that fails you will need an external drive and attempt a file level recovery


Be aware that recovery on a SSD is much less likely to succeed. On old hard drives, when a file is deleted the sector is simply marked as free and the pointer to the data is removed. On an SSD trim runs often and will actually clear out data almost immediately.

Hi @OldGrantonian,

You can try Partition Recovery with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free v9.1 ( In later versions of MiniTool Partition Wizard. Partition Recovery is not free)

Download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free v9.1 from Download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.1 for windows - Filepuma.com

Install and launch the application. If it offers a new later version say "No" and dispose that popup.

On the left Pane, click on Partition Recovery Wizard > Next > Select your disk on which you had lost the partition > Next > Full Disk > Next > QuickScan > Next. Allow the quick scan to complete. At the end of the quickscan you will get a window showing all the found partitions Post a screenshot of it ( only that Window. No need of any background). After you have taken the screenshot click on Cancel button on that Window and close PW. You can run it again if need be.

After examining the screenshot, further instructions will follow.

Just to make you feel confident, I am posting a screenshot , after running the Partition Recovery Wizard v 9.1 on the system disk in my Dell Inspiron 3280 from which I am posting this..

Sorry for the late reply.
Do you have any data on your deleted D Drive?
Could you take a snapshot of your disk?
(Control management -> Administrative tools -> Computer management -> Disk management)