A hard disk partition is a storage space on a hard drive. It is created to organize and manage the hard disk in a better way. In fact, it is common to have multiple partitions on our PCs. The biggest plus of creating partitions is the segregation of the operating system files and program files from the user files. Because of this, the image backups of operating system and other software can be easily managed. Also, you always have a separate area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging. However, even the hard disk partitions are prone to damage. The partitions can get lost, missed, or damaged due to various reasons such as power fluctuations, virus infections, abrupt system shutdown, damaged operating system, etc. Due to this, the partition can become inaccessible and you will have to use a third-party partition recovery software to recover partition.

Consider a scenario wherein you switch on your computer system. Instead of booting, it shows a blank screen. An error message may be displayed, which could be either of the following:

“Unable to read partition table.” “Invalid partition table.” “Error loading operating system.” “Missing operating system.”

Once you get this message the computer does not boot and all the partitions become corrupt and, thus, inaccessible.

Cause:

The root cause of this error message is that the partition table may have been damaged, which has resulted in it, being inaccessible.

Resolution:

To resolve this issue, you should replace the corrupt partition by a new one. This could be done by formatting the system and installing a fresh copy of Windows operating system. This method would recover partition but the data will be lost. So, for safe Window partition recovery you should consider using a third-party tool to recover Windows partition. Such read-only tools recover partition without damaging the existing content.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software is an efficient tool that can perform partition recovery from FAT and NTFS file systems. It is packaged with a Boot CD, which is very handy if the system does not boot up. It is capable of taking images of the hard drive and cloning them. It supports various partitions such as FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5. It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.