DiskPart Windows Drive Recovery

[@TheMack]

Also, a tip to make sure you select the correct drive in Diskpart, is to first do a "list disk", then a "list volume". The latter shows the letters and labels of the volumes of the drives/volumes. This is especially useful if you have more than one drive/volume of the same size.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good tip!

[@nicholashegblini8811]

Upgraded my SSD today, and diskpart was used several times. Worked great, and now I replaced my 250 SSD with a 500 SSD. Thanks so much for your great instruction.

[@markdonnelly1913]

Always happy to see the command line given some love. It gives my ancient bones a satisfying feeling of nostalgia.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@thewatcher5271]

Hey Mark, I'm Always Tapping Winkey+R For Something Or Another. Yeah, I Was Going To Say The Same Thing In A Long, Drawn Out Wordy Paragraph For C.B.'s Amusement But Your Comment Was So Concise, I Gave You A Thumbs Up & Maybe He'll See My Reply Here . . .

[@stephenlittle7534]

Totally agree guy's. Good old day's of learning Dos 1. Sorry for being this age. 😂

[@robertkeddie]

When I first saw the title of this video, my first thought was of the days when I used assembly language to access the tracks and sectors directly. And the sectors weren't necessarily numbered 0,1,2,3...

[@thewatcher5271]

@@stephenlittle7534 Hey Man, Why Sorry!?! I'm Old Too. Remember Back In The Early '90's, Calling BBS's & Listening To The Hayes Modem Squeal!?! Good Times, Man!!

[@George_K1]

Another wonderful video as usual Chris... It is maybe worth it to note that the "List Disk" command will show an " * " next to the successfully selected disk after successful selection - This way ensures you have the intended target disk selected... Now, if you have two identical disks with the same name and same size and you can't tell which disk is which, you can further use LIST VOLUME and LIST PARTITION commands to further identify the connected disks.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for the tip!

[@niero99]

I knew about DiskPart. I had a corrupted PHILIPS 32GB thumb drive. Your video triggered its repair with the 'clean' option... and it worked instantly. Brilliant information and so thanks from the Netherlands! :-)

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good to hear!

[@doubleG333]

Who would've thought that through my personal (painfull) attempt to install W10 on an old athlon 2 x 240 computer i'd find DiskPart and it's usefullness only to be explained by my favorite youtube channel in detail i'd have never personally discovered. Another great video right here. Deeply appreciated!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Glad this helped! :)

[@horstschlumma8501]

To be extra careful, one should examine the output of "detail disk" (after: select disk N) that will display some disk properties like the manufacturer and disk type.

[@MrThomascd]

Thanks for posting. I have used this process however, it is always good to see it used correctly. Old Saying "you never have time to do it right but you always have time for a redo"

[@ExplainingComputers]

Nice saying!

[@kyoudaiken]

Very nice video, this will help a lot of people! One addition: You can always triple check the drive number in the Disk Management tool. There you can identify the drives much better because you see the content, names, etc. The Index numbers are the same as in DiskPart.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good point. :)

[@alrestivo2746]

I was going to throw out a 500gb m.2 ssd , I could not find a way to fix it anywhere on the net. I knew that being one of your subscribers would pay offsome day and it sure did today, thank you so much.

[@SyberPrepper]

Thanks for making this. This type of video about different tools is foundational, and appreciated.

[@FINNIUSORION]

I rediscovered diskpart while searching how to remove a protected partition from a 3t secondhand hard drive. I was amazed how fast it cleaned the drive. It was instantaneous.

[@devpbrown]

I love watching your videos. They are so clearly explained. I have been using diskpart clean for about a year now, which has saved me a lot of money, not having replace a flash drive.

[@peters6601]

Funny I came across this utility this very afternoon when I wanted to reuse a 2TB HDD which was out of a defunct Sky receiver. I however continued to clean and reformat the drive in the cmd terminal using Diskpart. Your method using Windows disk management to reformat the drive is by far the easiest method. Thanks for another informative video.

[@adamkee97]

Personally, I use Disk Management in most cases. diskpart is something useful for me when Disk Management cannot tell me much about a corrupted storage. Also, I prefer exFAT for removable storage and NTFS for internal drives. That's because Android and MacOS work better with exFAT drives.

[@my-yt-inputs2580]

The main problem with Disk Management is sometimes you have a partition it will simply not remove. Leaving DiskPart as the only way(using built in MS tools) to get rid of it.

[@peterjansen4826]

Disk Management can often not handle it if you made a live-USB-stick.

[@adamkee97]

@@peterjansen4826 Yeah, that's why I use diskpart when Disk Management itself too much of a newb to handle a weirdly formatted drive that it cannot recognise.

[@UnfilteredMedic]

I had to do this exact thing about a week ago on an older 2.5" HHD that is over 10 years old. It still work well despite it's age but the three step he shows here works. Don't rush it.

[@jeyendeoso]

Excelent video as usual, Chris! Of course as soon as I started watching, I had to give these commands a try with some old microSD cards I had laying around. Of course I immediatly ran into problems but they were quickly resolved! Windows wasn't recognizing them (using a microSD to USB adapter). Turns out the problem was because I was using the front USB ports on my pc. As soon as I plugged them on the back usb ports, they immediatly worked fine. So my quick tip is, if you are having problems with a USB drive, SD card reader or any storage, not being recognized, corrupted data and other things like that, try plugging it on the back of your computer! Sometimes the solution is very simple like that. Plugging them in the back of your computer can be a bit of a hassle, but it surely is a lot more reliable and safe.

[@persona83]

A nice tip. Already read it on another place but it's sad these frontal USB ports are rarely as reliable as the back ports. I have an old P4 PC with rocksolid frontal USB ports, but it's an exception unfortunately. For serious tasks, the back ports are the way to go.

[@PaulBakewell]

AMAZING never had to use this command before but today had a Micro SD card that was not reading on windows. Used Diskpart and its all sorted out now. Saved returning to Amazon! Thanks Chris.

[@haroldcrane1595]

Wow, this is quite useful. I saved my 2 USB drives after watching this video. thank you sir.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Great 👍

[@srtcsb]

Ever since Windows 7 (I think), if I couldn't read a 'drive' device I'd just take it to Linux to manage it instead. I knew nothing about Diskpart. Now I know, and I'll Google it to see what other commands this utility offers. Thanks for another great video Chris.

[@HKey_Root]

Marvellous. I've used Diskpart in the past but still manage to forget it's usefulness and fret about struggling with free 3rd party software. Thanks.

[@kevinshumaker3753]

Title is misleading, although you clear it up in your explanation. Very good overall. Thanks for the multiple statements of the dangers. Unlike Linux and some other Windows utilities, there are NO safeguards for preventing 'clean'ing the active boot drive, or Windows install drive or partitions...

[@ExplainingComputers]

I think "misleading" is a little strong! :) I did struggle to come up with the best title though. "How to clean a drive using DiskPart" would not be very helpful, and what is show is how to recover a drive -- to make it usable again.

[@kevinshumaker3753]

@@ExplainingComputers My first thought was 'getting files/data back', not restoring drive to factory clean. Still, you did clear it up in your description, and I like most all your videos, very well thought out and simple explanations. I send my friends and customers here all the time. I do tech support for a living.

[@blinkinglightsandsmokingcaps]

Handy tip - you can use Windows Key+X to pull up a short administation menu. Disk management and a command prompt are there, amongst other things - although it defaults to Powershell unless you play with the Taskbar settings.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good tip, thanks for sharing.

[@DwightWilbanks]

@@ExplainingComputers Or right click the start menu gets you the same thing.

[@BilisNegra]

Knew about the menu, but I've always invoked it in the right-click manner. Good to know about the shortcut (though something tells me I will probably forget it).

[@Okurka.]

Next week explain how to use TestDisk to recover the accidentally deleted partitions.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@shambalawanyama533]

Or use dd function in Linux when Testdisk is found wanting

[@Pegaroo_]

@@ExplainingComputers And some program that can recover files

[@cris2k344]

its funny how this video popped up now. 2 weeks ago i got a new hdd, now have 3. instead of removing all other drives to be safe i just went ahead and used diskpart to format the new disk, exept it was another disk selected. now lost 500 gigs of music. used 2 different recovery software but its not very helpful :(

[@patbooth1798]

@@cris2k344 And I thought my 130 gigs of music was a lot ! you must have all the songs Im looking for

[@dxutube]

On the morning I had to pay my crefit card bill for a very expensive PC, I had to use diskpart & other commands to restore the boot partition which had somehow got corrupted. Happy to say that was successful & never had a repeat of the problem.

[@powerobxxx]

Utterly gobsmacked, I'd been fiddling around all day off an on with a 128G USB drive that was only showing 32G size , tried formatting etc and was just going to give up when your vid popped up. Thank you ever so much, my disk is back from limbo and working fine 😎😎😎😎😎

[@ExplainingComputers]

Great to hear your story. This is why I made this video!

[@6581punk]

I'd also assumed that MBR was what you always selected for Windows and that GUID was something from Macs.

[@horizon42q]

Oh my, I just used this command to recover a USB drive on Friday! Works good Yes, you better be safe and know every key you type in. Exactly

[@fklotaloi]

Genuine English accent, simply love it so much😍😍

[@johnhumphreys9879]

A very timely video Chris - I will not throw the corrupted unreadable SSD away now then, but to follow your instruction. Wish me luck, hoping that I do not end up with two unformatted drives!!!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Good luck -- and select your drive with care!

[@stephenlittle7534]

Very helpful as usual. It's nice to relearn stuff you don't normally use. Thanks Chris.

[@deechvogt1589]

Chris, you are brave to make a video like this. WARNING: BE VERY CAREFUL while using the diskpart utility. MAKE SURE you SELECT the CORRECT device. Thank for the video Chris!

[@ExplainingComputers]

I did hesitate for some time to make this video. But I answer so many comments where this is the answer, in the end I decided to risk it!

[@deechvogt1589]

Thanks Chris!

[@deechvogt1589]

@@ExplainingComputers Yes, exactly. Recently I wiped critical files from a built-in micro SD card on my laptop while using Etcher because I didn't select the external card reader I meant to.

[@MaynardFreek]

Chris, thanks for this video and the others you have. These have helped me understand how these things work and how to manage both Linux and Windows environments and how to use them both together in my home

[@ExplainingComputers]

Great to hear!

[@adityapandey7798]

A precise and to the point tutorial as always. Hope it will help those in need. Would love to see some more usefull commands being explained in your awesome educative style for disk management and data recovery and testing. Many will find it helpful.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Noted!

[@DanielBrosman08211986]

@@ExplainingComputers: I used Disk part to clean everything, is it possible to undo and recover everything including every partition that was ever been created under (C):// and to get it all back again

[@GercotenKate]

Diskpart saved me numerous times whereas the graphical disk management was not up to the task or where the GUI froze/became unresponsive. Great vid.

[@ExplainingComputers]

It seems we have similar experiences! :)

[@FrostyPigeon]

Another Excellent video, I use this all the time for my raspberry pi SD cards, had the problem a couple years ago when I had a few cards I wanted to reuse, but windows wouldn't format it the usual way so I figured it out the hard way through the help command. Glad someone did a video on it.

[@PixelCraftAnimationStudio]

Wait for that long time, Excellent 👍 Content.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks. I was not sure how this video would go down. But explaining this is something I constantly need to do in the comments, so I thought I'd make a video I can link to! :)

[@PixelCraftAnimationStudio]

@@ExplainingComputers Thanks for your observation. Can you create Explaining Processors or you can called Explaining CPUs ?

[@ExplainingComputers]

@@PixelCraftAnimationStudio Such a video is on my list. I am musing how to do it! But it is a good video idea, and you have spurred me on to get it made!

[@paulsalmon613]

Thanks for this video, that's my first old disk drive back in use for data, 3 old drives to go 😊

[@ExplainingComputers]

Cool. :)

[@bryanmay6405]

Something I'd like to add that I learned the hard way, is that the disk numbers in disk manager and diskpart DO NOT always match. Disk 0 in disk manager is not necessarily the same as disk 0 in diskpart, and same for any other disks listed in either utility. Use diskpart to verify the serial number of the drive if you aren't sure which one you need to select

[@NicolasChapadosGirard]

The diskpart utility tool use letter for arranging it self, if recall.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Very interesting -- and important to know!

[@bluephreakr]

_Meanwhile_ Linux device identifiers are always the same, in everything.

[@rjbook51]

commandwindows.com/diskpart.htm is the site where I learned the commands, and most of them make me nervous. However "list disk", "select disk (number), "list partition (number), and finally "select partition (number)" will list the files in a partition, which generally will tell you what is on the disk. All of those commands are safe, and as for the rest of them well "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" and I admittedly am more the former than the latter.

[@berndeckenfels]

You should mention diskpart clean is not enough to delete data if you want to sell or give away an old drive despite the data loss warnings in this good tutorial

[@ExplainingComputers]

Fair point -- to securely delete everything on a drive use "clean all" not "clean", which will take many hours on most drives of any size. But this video is not about deleting data to pass on a drive, but making it usable again.

[@neatodd]

This video was particularly useful for me. I'd bought an SSD a while ago and a USB adapter. I plugged it in to my PC expecting the PC to recognise it but - nothing. So I stuck it in a drawer expecting to look into it 'sometime'. Only seeing this video made me realise that I needed to set the SSD up first in Disk Management. Did that and it works! ...and I'm an IT guy so should know better!

[@alexk1480]

thank you so much for doing a video on this. i remember being 15, trying out linux for the first time and thinking ive broken my usb drive by flashing ubuntu to it!

[@springford9511]

I have just watched a couple of your videos. Great stuff. I have been looking to learn a bit about some of this and it has been impossible to find material that allows an understanding to develop. It's not me, I once wrote a program to mark a whole side (i.e. one head) of an HDD bad in the FATs (yes there are two of them). These videos are very, very good. I plan to binge-watch the rest now. Thanks.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for watching. :)

[@thewatcher5271]

Hey Mark, I'm Always Tapping Winkey+R For Something Or Another. Yeah, I Was Going To Say The Same Thing In A Long, Drawn Out Wordy Paragraph For C.B.'s Amusement But Your Comment Was So Concise, I Gave You A Thumbs Up & Maybe He'll See My Reply Here . . .

[@martinwilkinson2344]

I wondered why the USB stick I used for Linux test/installation had gone weird and couldn't be "cleaned" with a normal Windows Format. This fixed it!

[@ExplainingComputers]

I'm glad to hear that it worked!

[@cristianestrada6424]

Great video Chris, I use diskpart everyday to initialize drives and recover corrupt drives for my Clients!

[@naeem8434]

I have been using diakpart for a very long time. and it helps me a lot. Love to see a video on this from you sir.

[@Macho_Man_Randy_Savage]

Had to use this a few times in the past to fix disks that weren't paying nice, very useful tool indeed.

[@KowboyUSA]

Love a relaxing Sunday command-line jaunt. refreshers are always good. We should do this more often!

[@lindenh2014]

Thank you, Chris! I have an external drive that became corrupted when I tried to install Ubuntu Mate on it. I thought for a long time that it was physically damaged, but through following your tutorial I discovered that it wasn't. I am grateful for your help 😊

[@fernandosantos3864]

This video helped me to solve a problem with an SSD. Very well explained. Thank you

[@peterldelong]

I name end user partitions like this: You (C:) Smell (D:) Like (E:) Crayons (F:). I’m now collecting unemployment.

[@eminusipi]

Very useful information. I especially appreciate the Chapter breakdown in case I need to review a topic before I use it.

[@sbc_tinkerer]

Dearie me! A Windows based video. Albeit a very informative one. Extremely useful tool to know about. I use it often. Thank you sir!

[@steveowen8961]

Many thanks for the video. I've now managed to fully restore the capacity of a stick to 128GB whereas before it would only format to 32GB.

[@NaganathanSandramohan]

You are explaining very clearly like a teacher. Thank you

[@mikeharrington5593]

Very comprehensive yet simple to follow

[@scootertrashtx]

Thanks for sharing! I just fixed an old HDD I thought was trash.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Excellent!

[@Lightstep9]

Great video :) When working with disk utilities that have nuclear capabilities, I usually unplug the primary OS drive and boot with an external OS drive. Allows for shredding, partition, format etc without a worry.

[@TheGraphicsgriffin]

Great video as always! Thanks for explaining this powerful tool. Btw, where is Mr scissors?

[@vasilispapas482]

As diskpart is one of the most powerfull tools i think that is a good idea to make a video with more detailed informations and syntax examples about that tool and it`s options. As always a very usefull video from this channel! Thanks!

[@jamiemcglynn6600]

One thing I've got a habit of doing during (re-)formatting is to set the "allocation unit size" based on what the volume's primary purpose is going to be. I have learned over the last decade or so that larger units sizes will improve sequential performance (especially with multi-GB (video) files), but the efficiency diminishes when it comes to files smaller than the unit size itself.

[@DanielBrosman08211986]

Me too, I have a habit of re-formatting even when I think that there would be a way to recover all of the Overwritten data that was preformed, You are not the only one to do that to a computer.

[@MaynardFreek]

WOW Chris this was very useful and informative! I was able to save a 2TB HDD I thought was a goner. I recently threw away a 64GB thumb drive I'm now sure I could have saved, oh well. Because my HDD's are aging and I'm sure they all are initialized with MBR, I'm now faced with the chore of converting them all to GPT

[@marksterling8286]

Really useful video, I suspect you will get some very grateful viewers over time.

[@jogon1052]

Great advice as usual. I have a couple of flash drives that I have used for Linux installation and now can get them back to their proper use.

[@michelfilion5482]

I've used the dd command and gparted in Linux for worse case scenarios. Often enough for corruption after switching a fat32 formated ext. drive from Linux to Windows but didn,t know about Diskpart, so good to know. Thanks.

[@jeus2884]

Thank you I've been checking out and trying to remember how to do the recovery for Linux drive and I couldn't find any other videos or information on how to properly do it that wasn't a complete mess I just wound up forgetting not how to do it for so long

[@danieloathout6528]

Exactly what I needed. I have some USB drives that I installed linux on and have not been able to format them or use them in windows. Thanks. Another good video as always.

[@kailash8]

yesterday I think about diskpart various commands learning. today your video. 😍 (normally I used only to clear read only attributes from usb drive. )

[@Jfteksp1]

Thank you very much for this one, had 2 thumb drives I was having this very issue with.

[@perrymcclusky4695]

Oh my, I could have used the information from this video about 6 months ago! Valuable information indeed. Looking forward to your next video.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks Perry.

[@chriholt]

Very nice change of pace video Chris, many thanks as always!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings Chris. :)

[@andyfalc]

Hi Chris Very useful indeed, up to now I have always used 3rd party software to restore drives, but the software is a lot slower than diskpart. I was aware of diskpart but thought, as the name suggests, it was mainly for partitioning. Thank you.

[@davidunderwood3605]

As allways, great video, a good lesson for people like myself, a way behind not much time to study the function. Thankyou many times over.

[@zzstoner]

Clever. When you named the drive "Hello" and assigned it to D, the text then showed "Hello (D:)" which ends in an emoji smiley.

[@hometechadventure4462]

I use Diskpart all the time. I really like some of your tips! I did not know that you could start Diskpart directly from search, or that you could change the font in the command prompt.

[@williamhenrygalvezpenagos5750]

Me gustan los vídeos que usted publica, porque son muy claros y muy entendí bles, hay algunas metodologías que ya conozco y otras que complementó con las metodologías que usted enseña. Muchas gracias por compartir esos conocimientos. son de mucha ayuda. Un saludo desde Colombia 🇨🇴.

[@buccleuch7621]

Thanks Chris, Very helpful. I tend to just use my IT as a tool (not me) and only get involved with the 'back-end' when things don't go right, so this was a very useful video for me.

[@XSpImmaLion]

Flashbacks to diskpark, to park your hdd headers safely! xD great video, I'm always forgetting how to do this.

[@rich22221]

5:44 didn't even know you could resize the font of cmd or even that cmd has settings, Thanks.

[@honestgoat]

You can also set the window position in the settings too. That way every time you open the cmd window, it will also appear in the same spot. Particularly handy for multi monitor setups.

[@bluephreakr]

You can also edit the registry to add more fonts into command prompt if you wanted to take it one step further and use a monospace font not typically available in Windows and / or command prompt by default.

[@rogerkoh1979]

It is a very powerful. Use it with care. Another good show.

[@ExplainingComputers]

With great power comes great resonsiblity . . .

[@capritsuno2885]

I will be sharing this for sure!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Awesome, thank you!

[@MyHowHowHow]

Clean command seems very useful! I was having the exact same problem with an USB drive today. Cheers

[@Wol747]

As usual, Christopher, excellent run-through. Thank you.

[@rjbook51]

DiskPart is great and use it all the time to clean up my mishaps on drives. Fastest way to clean a drive, and then I switch to disk management.

[@Joss0051]

Very helpful, I have had problems with some disks in the past and this is just great.

[@brucejoseph8367]

I found out the hard way how powerful diskpart is. I did accidentally select my pc's own hdd instead of the external drive I was trying to recover. Presumably because everything is stored in ram nothing seemed wrong at first, it was a little later when I came back to my pc that the dreaded blue screen was staring back at me. I imagine Windows needed to access a file on the hdd but obviously nothing was there. I was under the mistaken impression that windows couldn't possibly let you clean the hdd that it is actually residing on, now I know better. It's a good thing I regularly back up my hdd.

[@ExplainingComputers]

A cautionary tale. Windows will indeed try to protect you, but not so command line tools like DiskPart . . .

[@jasonhawkins4528]

I use diskpart alot it is a great tool

[@dr.nunzio_improta]

It's beautiful the red WARNING label !!!

[@marcw6072]

Always good, clear, concise and informative content. Thank you very much.

[@sequri]

I use/recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard Free which is a very powerful and useful utility.

[@sobrismail]

Keyword:Free👍

[@crnlbwlawson]

#metoo

[@earnests5375]

Can it remove read write protected

[@abualid]

I like your way of speaking sir

[@Manian488]

My first encounter with diskpart was some years ago when trying to change gpt partition to mbr. Since then we are best friends.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@johng7rwf419]

Very useful, confirms I've been using diskpart correctly. Thank you..

[@rwprime1]

Another heads up. During the usage of diskpart, after list disk, select disk 2 I like to check to make sure I have chosen the correct one to be on the safe side, so I list partition then clean

[@ExplainingComputers]

An excellent tip, thanks for sharing.

[@samuelhulme8347]

Since you picked D for the drive, if Windows did :D the drive will be very happy, But since it’s D: it’s very sad :( . Great video as normal

[@szymongrabarczyk3561]

I remember using diskpart in my first backup scripts. That was a time before ransomwares started to use volume guid to access data. Diskpart assigned a letter to a backup drive -> source network disk was mapped -> data got robocopied from the network shares to the drive -> network drive was unmapped -> backup drive got the letter removed. It was a bit rought but it worked.

[@rccjr7055]

Thank you sir for a very useful tutorial..

[@bluephreakr]

For newbies: *NTFS* works on Windows and whatever operating system has requisite libraries to support it *exFAT* is too modern for older devices, but is supported on generally _all_ modern devices and systems wherever applicable *FAT32* is generally compatible with everything due to its age and devices which _still_ use it.

[@tonyelsom6382]

Thanks for that Chris, I used Rufus to detect drives and then used a very small iso to fool it into setting up a bootable drive.. after that I just delete the installed stuff ~ crude but effective..😉👍

[@tremorist]

Thank you very much for the video. I found out that gpt only works with newer install media of windows 10. My 2017 DVD required mbr to install.