Accidentally deleted dynamic volume in disk management

[Spare-Flair]

I was trying to extend my D: to recover extra space from an old partition I removed. It converted it to a dynamic volume but I accidentally deleted the entire thing.

What is the safest way to go about recovering this?

From the Microsoft article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245725

"Re-create the exact same volume but choose not to format it. This may be difficult if you do not remember the exact size you had created originally, especially because the Disk Management snap-in tends to round partition sizes."

Unfortunately, what it says is exactly true as I do not remember the exact partition size (who would?).

 

[leeleatherwood]

try @Active partition recovery software.

Even if they want you to pay to restore the partition at least the software can tell you the size of the partition, then you can use disk management.

 

[drescherjm]

Possibly testdisk

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

[evilsofa]

Yes, Testdisk is the way to do it. Easiest way to run Testdisk is probably on the UBCD, just put that on a bootable USB drive (using another computer, of course).

 

[Spare-Flair]

Lets say that before I attempt to recover the partition, I am feeling especially paranoid and data is important. What is the best way to do a sector by sector backup of the entire drive even though the volume is missing the boot sector? Will this get me a backup of my data so I can try to recover it on the 2nd drive instead of messing with the actual drive?

 

[adoch]

Lets say that before I attempt to recover the partition, I am feeling especially paranoid and data is important. What is the best way to do a sector by sector backup of the entire drive even though the volume is missing the boot sector? Will this get me a backup of my data so I can try to recover it on the 2nd drive instead of messing with the actual drive?

Clonezilla can do a sector by sector copy. By default it will detect the filesystem and use appropriate tools, but you can choose Expert mode, and one of the options says to ignore filesystem and do sector by sector.