A RAW drive refers to a non-system disk that, when you try to open it in File Explorer, prompts you with a window suggesting that you need to format the disk before you can use it. This usually indicates a problem with the file system on the drive.
“Format disk” often resolves hard drive issues but will erase its data. If you don't format the disk, you'll see an error that says “The volume does not contain a recognized file system.” Make sure all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not damaged.
This is a common hard drive issue in Windows 10/8.1/8/7. Don't panic when you can't open a local drive or removable disk, like a USB flash drive or an SD card. It usually happens because the file system of the hard drive has turned to RAW. Go to Windows Disk Management (This PC/My PC – Manage – Disk Management), and you'll see the RAW drive as shown below:
Moreover, there are several other symptoms that indicate your hard drive has turned into RAW format. For instance:
(1) You run the chkdsk command and receive the message: "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK cannot be used on a RAW drive."
(2) Your computer fails to boot from the system disk and shows an error message: "Operating System Not Found".
In short, there are many reasons that can lead to RAW file system on both old and new hard drive, and we list some common ones here.
If it's a brand new hard drive that you've never used before, you can simply format the disk and convert RAW to NTFS or other file systems as prompted, thus returning it to normal. However, if it's a hard drive with a large amount of data, you'll need to use professional RAW drive recovery software to retrieve data from the RAW drive or partition.
Read on to know how to use a professional RAW drive recovery tool to retrieve data from a RAW drive. We also provide effective methods to help you fix RAW HDD/USB flash drive/pendrive/SD card without losing any data. We hope this guide helps you resolve RAW drive issues with ease.
It's sad to see a RAW drive that needs formatting to be used again. Formatting a hard drive helps assign a recognizable file system like NTFS, FAT, or FAT32 to it, but disk formatting completely wipes the data, and the lost files cannot be restored from the Recycle Bin. Hence, we highly recommend performing RAW data recovery before formatting and exporting the data from the original drive.
Data Recovery Wizard Pro is a powerful recovery tool that makes it super easy and quick to scan and recover data from RAW drives.
One major reason to choose the Tools RAW Drive Recovery software is that it can easily perform formatted hard drive recovery without any hassles, even if you have formatted your disk. It acts as an all-round data recovery expert and handles issues arising after deletion, partition loss, disk formatting, or virus/trojan attacks.
Video Tutorial: Recover Data from RAW Drive
Step-by-step guide to perform RAW drive recovery using Tools:
Step 1. Select and scan the RAW partition
If the RAW partition has a partition label, you can directly select it from the drive list and click "Scan" to search for lost files. If the RAW partition loses its label, it will be recognized as "Lost Partition". Just select "Lost Partition" and click "Scan" to perform a full scan on the RAW drive.
Step 2. Preview the data found in the scan result
After the scan is finished, all recoverable files from the RAW hard drive will be displayed. Check these files and locate the ones you wish to restore. You can sort the scanned data by file types, or simply search for the file or folder in the “Search for files or folders” box.
Step 3: Recover data from RAW partition
Select all the files and click on “Recover” to get back all the data. Choose another internal or external hard drive to save the recovered data and then hit “OK” to start RAW drive recovery.
If a data recovery tool is unable to restore your RAW files, you can still retrieve your data by using a RAW recovery service.
tools RAW Recovery Service
Click here to contact our experts for a free evaluationConsult with our tools Data Recovery Specialist for a one-on-one manual RAW recovery service consultation. After the free diagnosis, we offer the following services:
After using the Tools RAW Data Recovery to retrieve data from the RAW partition, you can proceed to fix it by formatting the RAW hard drive, SD card, or USB drive in various ways. For instance, you can easily format the RAW drive to FAT, NTFS, or EXT using the free partition manager tool.
Step 1: Launch Partition Master.
Right click on the RAW partition or RAW external hard drive/USB/SD card that needs formatting and select “Format”.
Step 2: Format the RAW partition and reset the file system.
Assign a label to the new partition, choose the file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3/EXT4/exFAT), and the cluster size, then click “OK”.
<b>Step 3:</b> <strong>In the warning window, click Yes to continue.</strong>
Click “Yes” to allow the program to format the target RAW partition with the file system you selected for the drive.
Step 4: Perform the action.
Hit the “Execute 1 Task” button at the bottom right to review all changes made, and then click “Apply” to start formatting RAW partition/USB/SD/external hard drive.
Aside from formatting partitions, Partition Master Free also offers you with other comprehensive partition and disk management solutions for your Windows computer. Other features include: resizing/moving partitions, creating, formatting, deleting, and merging partitions; copying and cloning entire disks, converting FAT to NTFS partitions, converting MBR disk to GPT, or converting GPT disk to MBR, and more.
Aside from using tools Partition Master, you can also format RAW drive using Disk Management, Windows Explorer, or the Diskpart command.
If formatting does not work, or you do not want to format your RAW hard drive for data safety, how can you fix RAW partition without losing data in this case? The solution is to seek help from the one-on-one remote manual support of tools. The technical experts of tools can fix your RAW SD card, USB flash drive, pen drive, or external hard drive without formatting, ensuring that the repaired partition is the same as the original drive and no data will be lost. Any complicated data loss issue can be resolved.
Possible causes for a RAW drive include bad sectors on the device, a corrupted partition table, or a virus/malware attack. You can easily recover data from a RAW partition using reliable tools like tools Data Recovery Wizard.
Though in most cases, you can recover data from RAW drive, still you need to take care of certain things to prevent your drive from turning RAW again:
Please read on to know more about RAW file system and how to recover data from RAW drive.
What is a raw drive? A raw drive refers to a disk partition or storage device that has not been formatted or does not have an assigned file system. In an operating system, when a drive is not assigned a specific file system or the file system is corrupted to the point where it cannot be read, it is considered a raw drive. On a raw drive, you cannot directly access or store data; it needs to be formatted first to create a usable file system.
A RAW file system means that a hard drive is in an unformatted or unknown file system state. Whether it's a memory card, computer hard drive, or another device, you won't be able to access its data if it's showing up as a RAW drive. RAW file system isn't a standard file system. When a hard drive shows as RAW, the operating system can't recognize it. The quick fix for a RAW file system is to format the drive, but this doesn't always work.
How to recover files from the original drive?
Here are the three steps to recover files from a RAW drive using the tool RAW Drive Recovery software:
< strong > Step 1. < /strong > Search and scan the RAW formatted hard drive.
Step 2. Look for and preview the found data in the RAW partition.
Step 3: Recover and save RAW drive data.
How to convert RAW partition back to NTFS?
You can use Disk Management to convert RAW to NTFS:
How to fix RAW drive without formatting in UTF-8?
To fix RAW drive without formatting or losing data, you can seek manual assistance from tools experts. The technical specialists at tools provide help in extreme cases of data loss, such as reformatted drives, RAW disks, lost partitions, failed repartitioning, and system boot errors. They can repair your RAW storage device without formatting it and ensure that the repaired partition is identical to the original drive.