Dell Recovery Partition Missing? Restore it Easily Now

"The Dell recovery partition is missing"

"I purchased a dell Vostro laptop with 3 years warranty, after some time I found the recovery partition was missing for no reason, and then I tried many times to get the dell recovery partition back but no success. Please if anyone can help me in this issue it will be appreciated."

Importance of (Dell) recovery partition

The recovery partition is a special section on the OEM computer hard drives. Manufacturers like Dell, Acer, HP, MSI and other computers use the recovery partition to hold the information, which are used to restore the system to factory settings in the event of system issues. If your Dell computer does run into some errors, the factory recovery partition can help you get your software programs, device drivers and system settings back. So you don’t need to purchase a new OS or take the computer a repair shop.

In one word, the recovery partition is quite important. However, the Dell recovery partition missing becomes a common issue among computer users. For example, the recovery partition is deleted by mistake, or this special partition lacks of a drive letter, etc. So, you might be wondering: "Is it possible to restore a missing recovery partition?"

2 Methods: restore missing Dell recovery partition in Windows

As for how to recover the missing recovery partition in Dell, Asus, Acer, MSI, and other brands' computers, different causes require different solutions. Today, we will focus on restoring recovery partition which is missing because of no drive letter and mistaken deletion.

Method 1. Assign a drive letter to the missing Dell recovery partition

If you find the Dell recovery partition is missing in Windows File Explorer simply because it does not have a drive letter, you can assign one to this special partition via Windows native tools like Disk Management or Diskpart.

A. Use Disk Management to get back missing recovery partition

1. Press Win+R to open Run dialogue, input “diskmgmt.msc” and hit on ”Enter” to launch Disk Management.

2. Right-click the recovery partition and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”.

3. In the next window, to change the drive letter, select “Change”. To add a drive letter if the drive doesn't already have one, select “Add”.

4. Select the new drive letter, select “OK”.

B. Use Diskpart to restore lost Dell recovery partition

1. Press Win+R to open Run dialogue, input “diskpart” and hit on ”Enter” to launch Diskpart.exe utility.

2. Type “list volume” and press “Enter” to list all volumes on your computer.

3. Type “select volume #” and press “Enter” (replace with the number of your recovery partition).

4. Type “assign letter=f” and press “Enter”.

At last, you can execute the “Exit” command to close this window. After that, you can open Windows File Explorer to check whether the missing Dell factory recovery partition is back or not.

Method 2. Restore missing Dell recovery partition via partition software

If you delete the recovery partition by accident and leads to its missing in Windows File Explorer, you need to use a professional partition recovery utility. Here we highly recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It comes with the “Partition Recovery Wizard”, capable of restoring deleted recovery partitions in all versions of Windows 10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista, Most importantly, the data stored on the partition will be back as well. Below are specific steps.

1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click “Recover” on in the top toolbar, and choose “Partition Recovery”.

2. Select a search method in this window. “Fast Search” is recommended. If it fails, you can go for “Full Search”.

3. Select the disk which contains the missing Dell recovery partition. And click “Next”.

4. Tick the missing recovery partition and hit on “Proceed”.

5. Then wait for the process to be done. When you see “Congratulations”, the missing Dell recovery partition is recovered successfully.

If your computer cannot boot as usual due to boot related partition missing (like boot partition being removed accidentally), you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional to make a bootable media and perform missing partition recovery in Windows PE environment.

You can also recover data if there is any important data lost.

How to create a new Dell recovery partition?

For the “Dell recovery partition missing” issue, the above 2 solutions are worth trying. Besides that, you can try to create a new Dell recovery partition. Below, we have outlined the steps you need to follow:

1. Click the Windows "start" key and type “Recovery Drive”. Under Settings, click “Create a recovery drive”. You will be asked whether you would like to open ”Recovery Media Creator”. Click “Yes”.

2. Tick the “Back up system files to the recovery drive” option and then click “Next”.

3. Connect a USB drive to your PC, and then select “Next” > “Create”.

When the recovery partition is created successfully, you can do as below to restore your system from it if the Windows PC is not running as it should.

1. Connect the recovery drive to your PC.

2. Turn on your computer and choose “Troubleshoot” from the given options.

3. Choose “Recover from a drive”.

Sum up

This article has provided 2 effective solutions to Dell recovery partition missing. And, no matter which brand of computer you use such as Asus, HP, MSI and so on, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is able to recover its deleted recovery partition quickly.

If your recovery partition occupies too much space and you want to delete it for freeing up disk space, you can also AOMEI Partition Assistant to copy recovery partition to USB drive for a backup, and then delete it without worry. To deal with recovery partition missing problem in Server computer, try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server, please.