When their system notifies them that Windows cannot identify their drive or partition, Windows users experience one of the most terrifying moments of their lives. There’s no need to worry, thankfully. This typically indicates that your drive or partition is RAW, which may be easily and quickly restored with no data loss using data recovery software.
A drive full of files suddenly going RAW can be terrifying, especially if you don’t have any backups.
Fortunately, users can perform RAW drive recovery effortlessly by following the method mentioned in this article.
This article provides complete information you need to effectively complete the procedure and quickly recover your files if you have never recovered files from a RAW hard drive. Moreover, we have also discussed various ways using which you can fix your RAW hard drive.
Table of Contents:
What are the Symptoms of a RAW Hard Drive?
How can you tell if a hard drive is RAW? First, be aware that your external hard drive has turned RAW if you experience the following.
- The “RAW” file system is displayed.
- File names have strange characters.
- Windows displays a “There is no format on this drive. Want to format right away?” message.
So now the question arises, “why your hard drive became RAW?”. We have answered this question in the following section.
What makes your Hard Drive RAW?
Your brand-new or used hard drive could become RAW for many reasons, and we’ve listed some common ones here.
- The system failed
- Sudden power surges or power cuts
- Detaching the drive without proper ejection
- Turning off a computer improperly
- Malfunctioning of the drive
- Accumulation of bad sectors on the external drive
- Virus or malware attack
- Any physical damage to the disk
Now that you are aware of the reasons why your hard drive has gotten RAW. Kindly go through the next section to find out how to return your files.
How to Recover Data from a RAW External Hard Drive?
Yodot Hard Drive Recovery Software is a most-sought-after RAW hard drive recovery tool to retrieve more than 500 types of files that are deleted, lost, missing, inaccessible from any internal or external hard drives, SSDs, USBs, Flash drives, Pen drives, etc. which have gotten RAW.
The tool is built with powerful algorithms to create a replica of the hard drive as a file that can be recovered if your hard disk has gotten corrupt, accumulated bad sectors, or has turned RAW.
Moreover, one of the tool’s best features is the sort feature, which lets you filter files based on file types, size, date, file extension, etc.
Download the tool now and recover RAW Data from an external hard drive with just a few clicks.
How To Use Yodot Hard Drive Recovery Tool?
Step 1: Install the Yodot Hard Drive Recovery tool on your Windows PC after downloading it. Connect the RAW file system error-displaying hard disk to the Windows PC.
Step 2: Complete the recovery process by adhering to the detailed instructions.
Step 3: If you want to recover data from a RAW file system, select Partition Recovery. The system now shows all of the attached devices or partitions. Next, select the drive from which files should be recovered and give the software permission to scan it.
Step 4: The application thoroughly examines the chosen drive and displays recovered data. View the data that can be saved in two different view types.
Step 5: You can preview the recovered file using the Preview option to ensure the correct file has been recovered.
Step 6: Click Next after selecting the desired files and folders from the list you wish to restore.
Note: It is crucial to avoid selecting the source drive because doing so will result in the data being permanently erased.
Now that you have safely recovered your files, you can try to fix the RAW drive.
How To Fix RAW Hard Drive?
Fixing RAW drives is usually the tricky part. Many users complain that they have lost their files permanently. That’s precisely why we suggest you recover data and then try fixing the drive.
Mentioned here are two ways that are proven to fix any RAW drive.
1. Run CHKDSK on the RAW Drive
Suppose your system recognizes the connected RAW drive and displays a drive letter. Then you can make use of CHKDSK to fix the issue.
But if your drive doesn’t appear on your system, try the following method.
Here’s how to use the CHKDSK option to fix the RAW drive.
Step 1: Attach your RAW format external hard disk to your computer.
Step 2: Type “cmd” into the search box in the taskbar. Click “Command Prompt” again and select “Run as administrator” from the context menu.
Step 3: To repair your RAW external hard drive, enter chkdsk e: /f and press Enter. (e denotes the drive letter, change Your RAW drive’s drive letter.)
Open disk management and check if your connected drive is visible and working usually. If the issue is not yet resolved, try the next solution.
2. Format RAW Drive to NTFS
Formatting the problematic drive is the answer to fixing it. Unfortunately, as previously noted, RAW means your external hard drive has not yet been formatted.
You are formatting the RAW drive to any supported file system such as NTFS, FAT32, ReFS, exFAT, etc. It can solve your problem and make your drive healthy.
Follow the steps explained below to format the RAW drive.
Step 1: Attach your external hard disk in RAW format to your computer.
Step 2: Click on the search bar, type”Disk Management” and select Create and Format Hard Drive partition.
Step 3: Locate the RAW hard disk and select “Format” from the context menu.
Step 4: Choose the NTFS file system and give your hard disk a drive letter.
Step 5: To format your RAW hard disk, click “Start.” Click “OK” after the formatting is complete.
Conclusion:
Here we end our discussion on how to recover data from any external hard drive that has suddenly turned RAW. Also mentioned here are two ways: CHKDSK and Formatting. These solutions are time-tested and expert-approved to fix the RAW drives.
We highly recommend you first Recover data and save it on any external drive and then proceed to repair the drive since CHKDSK and disk formatting, in most cases, lead to permanent data loss.
