A Windows hard drive can be divided into several partitions for effective management of data and to prevent data loss in case of operating system malfunction. The information about hard drive partitions is contained by Partition Table. It is a 64-byte metadata structure located at first sector of hard drive. It stores information about size, file system, location, starting sector and ending sector of the hard drive. Every partition entry could be 16-byte long and thus you can create only 4 primary partitions. In case of any damage to this data structure, you can not access your hard drive partitions and stored data. It results into serious partition loss situations and require Partition Recovery to be sorted out.

In a practical situation, when you attempt to start you Microsoft Windows computer, the system may not boot up and you might come across a number of error messages related to partition table and the MBR (Master Boot Record). The error messages may look like the following ones:

è Invalid Partition Table

è Unable to read partition table

è  Missing operating system

è  Error loading operating system

After this behavior of Microsoft Windows, the system can not be started and all of the hard drive partitions become inaccessible. In such circumstances, to access data from hard drive, you are required to find out the cause of this issue and go for Partition Recovery solutions.

Root of the issue

As stated in the above error messages, this issue generally occurs due to corruption to the partition table. Due to the same, Windows can not find essential boot files and the boot record of your system and thus the boot process could not complete.

Resolution

In order to access data in such situations, try attaching your drive with another healthy Windows computer. If you can access data from it, then save your data to a functional storage media and if the drive is not accessible, go for Partition Recovery Software to retrieve lost partitions and stored data.

These are powerful and advanced third party tools, which allow you to thoroughly scan entire hard drive and recover all of the Windows partitions from it. The Partition Recovery Software do not demand sound technical skills as they have interactive and simple graphical user interface.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and robust tool to retrieve FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system partitions. This software is designed for Microsoft Windows 7 RC1, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000. With read only and non destructive conduct, it is completely safe to use.