Summary: Data lost after changing the drive letter is the most common issue user faces. Here in this blog we tried to give all the best solution that user can try to recover his data after changing the letter.
Drive letter plays an integral part in the PC environment. It is a single alphabetic character (from A to Z), which is assigned by the Windows OS to the connected drive volumes or partitions.
A drive partition or volume—whether internal or external—is not accessible unless it is assigned a valid drive letter. But what happens when we change the drive letter or assign a different drive letter to a drive?
For instance, if you have installed some programs or stored files in different volume other than C: changing letter will make them inaccessible. In simple words, it breaks the things in your system.
All the installed programs will stop working, as they will not be able to find the required files at the address saved. Any project you are working on will be lost. That’s why windows display a stern warning message when you try to change the drive letter (see screenshot).
However, reverting to previous drive letter can solve these problems.
This implies that data is not usually lost or deleted when you change the drive letter. However, it’s not recommended that you change the drive letter, unless necessary. Changing drive letter is closely associated with data loss as people often accidentally end up formatting the drive while assigning a new drive letter.
Once drive is formatted, data is lost completely. In such a case, a data recovery software can save you from such situations—and that’s the only way.
Also, if the drive letter is not assigned to (or removed from) the drive volume or partition—may happen accidentally or if the system is infected with malware or virus—the drive becomes permanently inaccessible, and the user loses the access to their data forever (see screenshot).
In this post, we will discuss how you can recover data lost after changing the drive letter. Also, useful tips while using a powerful tool like Disk Management.
Here’s the most efficient, safe, and quick way of recovering data lost after changing the drive letter:
1. Add or Change to an original Drive letter
2. Use Data Recovery Software
This method can help you restore files from an accidentally formatted or deleted drive volume or partition—may have happened while changing the drive letter. It also lets you restore files from the drive without any drive letter. All you need to do is follow the steps given below:
This completes the recovery process. Alternatively, watch this video to recover your lost data
Quick Tips to Prevent data loss after changing the drive letter:
Changing drive letter is quick with ‘Disk Management’ utility, but you must know its consequences. As pointed out in the blog, there is no risk of losing data merely by changing the drive letter. Rather the problem arises if the drive letter is missing, the drive is inaccessible; the partition is lost, or else the drive is accidentally formatted. In all such cases of data loss situation, Stellar Data Recovery- Standard for Windows can be your saviour.
Use the software when assigning original drive letter fails to get back the lost after changing the drive letter.
Isha is a technical blogger and data recovery expert. She has experience in Windows data recovery. She writes about technical tips and tutorials.
Hi,
Your detailed steps are really helpful to me to recover my lost data after changing my drive letters.
I accidentally renamed a hard drive by right clicking it. Now this drive is inaccessible and wont even initialise in disk management
Error shows as ‘request failed due to fatal hardware error’
Pls help thanks
Is the Stellar Professional data recovery software recovers lost data from inaccessible hard drive?
Why Not, You just need to switch to more advance feature i.e Deep Scan to recover all the lost data after formatting the affected hard drive.
Thank you for the information.Great tips are provided in the article:)
Thanks Kabir
Stellar Windows Data Recovery software is a nice tool for inaccessible or lost partition recovery.
Hello Andrew,
Thanks for the feedback.
The step-by-step methods to recover important files are very useful to me.
Hello Bryan,
Many Thanks for the kind words.