A RAW drive refers to a disk whose file system is not recognized by your Windows operating system. When you try to open such a non-system disk in File Explorer, you get a prompt telling you to format the disk before using it. This usually happens due to file system corruption.
“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 reads, “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 disk or removable disk (like USB flash drive or SD card) in this way. It usually happens because the hard drive file system has become RAW. Go to Windows Disk Management (This PC/My Computer – Manage – Disk Management), and you will see a RAW drive as shown below:
Moreover, there are several other symptoms that indicate your hard drive has turned into RAW format. For instance:
(1) Run the chkdsk command and you receive the message: "The type of the file system is RAW. Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is RAW."
(2) Your computer fails to boot from the system disk and displays "Operating System Not Found" or "Missing Operating System".
In short, there can be various reasons that make a new or old hard drive become RAW, and we have listed some common ones here.
If it's a brand new hard drive that you haven't used before, you can directly 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 recover data from RAW drive using a professional RAW drive recovery tool. We also provide effective methods to help you fix RAW HDD/USB flash drive/pen drive/SD card without losing any data. Hope this guide helps you resolve RAW drive issues with ease.
It's sad to see a RAW drive, and you'll have to format it to use it again. Formatting the hard drive helps assign a recognizable file system like NTFS, FAT, or FAT32 to it, but disk formatting will wipe out all data, and you can't recover lost files from the recycle bin. Therefore, we highly recommend performing RAW data recovery before formatting and exporting data from the RAW drive.
Tool Data Recovery Wizard is a powerful Tool Data Recovery Wizard. It's easy and fast to scan and recover data from RAW drives with this tool.
One major reason to opt for RAW Drive Recovery software is that it can easily restore files from a formatted hard drive, even if you have formatted the disk. It acts as an all-in-one data recovery expert after deletion, partition loss, disk formatting, or virus/trojan attacks.
Video Tutorial: Recover Data from RAW Drive
Step-by-step guide to RAW Drive Recovery:
Step 1: Select and scan the RAW partition
If the RAW partition has a drive letter, you can directly select it from the drive list and click on "Scan" button to search for lost files. If the RAW partition is without a drive letter, it will be recognized as "Lost Partition". Just select the "Lost Partition" and hit "Scan" to perform a full scan on the RAW drive.
Step 2: Preview data in the scan result
When the scan is finished, all recoverable files on the RAW hard drive will be displayed. Look through these files to find the one you want to recover. You can sort the scan results by file type, or use the “Search for files or folders” box to look for it.
Step 3: Recover data from the RAW partition
Select all the files and click on “Recover” to restore all the data. Choose another internal or external hard drive to save the recovered data and click on “OK” to start RAW drive recovery.
If a data recovery tool is unable to recover your RAW files, you can still use a RAW recovery service to get your data back with a high success rate.
Tool RAW Recovery Service
Contact our experts for a free evaluation.Consult with Tool Data Recovery experts for a one-on-one manual RAW recovery service. After a free diagnosis, we can offer the following services:
After using RAW data recovery tools to retrieve data from RAW partitions, you can proceed to format the RAW hard drive, SD card, or USB drive in various ways to fix them. For instance, you can easily format the RAW drive to FAT, NTFS, or EXT with a free partition manager.
Step 1: Launch Partition Master
Right click the RAW partition or RAW removable hard drive/USB/SD card that needs formatting and choose “Format”.
Step 2: Format the RAW partition and reset the file system.
Assign a new drive letter, select the file system (such as NTFS, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, or exFAT) and cluster size, then click OK.
Step 3: Click “Yes” on the warning prompt to proceed.
Step 4: Execute the action.
Click on “Perform 1 Task” at the bottom right corner to preview all the changes made, and then click on “Apply” to start formatting RAW partition/USB/SD/external hard drive.
In addition to formatting partitions, the free partition manager also provides you with 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 disks to GPT disks or vice versa during Windows installation, and much more.
Aside from using the Partition Master tool to format a RAW drive, you can also use Disk Management, Windows Explorer, or the Diskpart command to do the job.
Well, if formatting ain't an option, or you're worried about losing data, how do you fix a RAW partition without sacrificing your files? Here's the deal: grab a one-on-one remote manual support tool. Their tech wizards can sort out your RAW SD card, USB stick, mobile hard drive, or external HDD without the need for formatting. They'll make sure the repaired partition matches the original and all your data stays safe. No more headaches over lost data, problem solved.
Possible reasons for a RAW drive include bad sectors on the device, corrupted partition tables, or virus/malware attacks. Data can be easily recovered from a RAW partition using reliable tools like Data Recovery Wizard.
Though in most cases, you can recover data from RAW drive, still to prevent the drive from turning RAW again, you need to take care of the following:
For more information on RAW file system and how to recover data from RAW drive, read on.
What is the prime mover?
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 data on a RAW drive. RAW file system isn't a standard file system. When a hard drive appears 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 do I recover files from the original drive?
Here are the three steps to recover files from RAW drive using RAW Drive Recovery software:
< strong > Step 1. < /strong > Search and scan the RAW hard drive.
Step 2. Look for and preview the data found in the RAW partition.
Step 3. Recover and save the RAW partition 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?
For RAW drive recovery without formatting or data loss, you can seek one-on-one manual support from the tool's experts. The technical specialists will assist you with 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 and ensure that the recovered partition is identical to the original drive.