A hard drive may turn RAW due to various factors such as malware infections, file system errors, corrupt file, system crash, etc. A Raw external hard drive indicates a logical volume with an undefined or unsupported file system. With no known file system, a RAW external hard drive becomes inaccessible? one that can neither be accessed nor be used to store data. In several cases of a RAW drive, the drive may contain partitions that are not recognizable.
WARNING: In Windows, when you connect the RAW external hard drive, it prompts you to format it. NEVER click ?Format Disk? if you see such prompt. When you format a RAW drive, the data that is inside the drive is also lost.
To check a RAW drive, open the ?Disk Management?. Further, find the drive?s partitions file system and check if any of them has turned into RAW, unallocated, or free.
Also, when you attempt to access such partition on the hard drive, you may encounter an error message stating, ?Disk in the drive is not formatted, do you want to format it now? or ?Location is not available.?
If that?s the case with your drive or a partition, probably your drive is corrupt or has a damaged file system. However, the data remains on the drive unless you format it. And to retrieve your data from such drive, you can try repairing the drive with CHKDSK scan. It fixes logical and file-system errors on the drive, and make it accessible.
Repair File System Errors with CHKDSK
When a RAW or corrupt external drive is connected, it?s recognized as a drive with an unsupported file system. It may or may not show in the file explorer. However, in both the cases, you won?t be able to access the drive and the data stored within.
You can run CHKDSK scan/repair if the system throws an error when you connect the drive. But if it doesn?t, then you need to assign a drive letter to your RAW drive or partition via Disk Management tool.
To run chkdsk and repair the corrupt drive, follow these steps:
- Press ?Windows+S? and type ?cmd.?
- Right click on Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator.
- Then find out the drive letter of the RAW or corrupt drive and type chkdsk /f /r X: where X is the drive letter.
- Press the Enter key to begin the scan.
- After the scan is finished, re-connect the drive and try to access it via File Explorer.
If the drive is still inaccessible, you will need a data recovery software that supports recovery from a RAW drive. One such software is Stellar Data Recovery Professional.
What?s nice about the software is that it natively recognizes and facilitates recovery from a RAW drive and missing partitions. In just 3-steps, you can recover data from a RAW or corrupt drive.
Quick, 3-Step Data Recovery From a RAW External Hard Drive
Connect the external hard drive and install Stellar Data Recovery Professional software on your Windows PC.
Then launch the software and start with the 3-step data recovery process, as follows:
- Select the data you wish to recover and click ?Next.?
- Select the RAW volume or the corrupt drive listed under ?Connected Drives?.
- Click ?Scan? and then select recovered data you wish to save at your desired location.
Also, you can preview the recovered files after scan, sort & filter the scan results, and use search to locate and recover the critical files quickly. The scan results are displayed in the left ?Tree View? pane by default. You can click ?File Type? to sort the data according to the file type.
Further, when you click the ?Recover? button after selecting the files, it provides ?Advanced Settings? option that can be used to save recovered files in one or multiple compressed folders. This saves significant storage space and comes handy when you are running on low storage.
Additionally, the software lets you save the scan results information [usually in a few KBs] that you can load in the software at a later stage to resume recovery. Again, it comes handy when you have low storage and less time as data recovery can be a time-consuming process.
So there you have it, a seamless way of recovering file from a RAW external drive.
Remember!
- To prevent a drive from becoming RAW or getting corrupt, always eject the drive before removing or disconnecting it. Especially, when you are running an I/O operation on the drive such as cut/copy/paste or accessing data from it.
- Use a S.M.A.R.T. analysis tool to keep an eye on the drive?s health. The recovery software we discussed comes with disk-monitoring tool that keeps you updated about your connected drive?s health on the go.
- Do not format a RAW drive and keep its use at minimal. Try CHKDSK repair or use a data recovery software to access or retrieve your data
Conclusion
Sometimes a RAW drive can be easily repaired with the help of Windows proprietary error checking tools such as CHKDSK. However, the tool can only handle and repair minor logical drive errors within the file system. Therefore, when chkdsk fails to repair, you need to act immediately and use a data recovery software such as the one we discussed in the post.
The software Stellar Data Recovery Professional supports recovery from RAW and severely corrupt drives. Besides, it comes with a built in disk-monitoring tool that monitors both internal and external hard drives for errors.
Dear editor, I could not access my external hard drive all of a sudden. I got a message said "The disk in drive H: is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" The problem is that I cannot format it. I have lots of important files on it. I know my external hard drive is raw now. Is there any way that I can recover data from raw hard drive? Thanks. - Chris from Little Rock, Arkansas
The raw hard drive usually means that there is no file system on that hard drive. This happens mostly because of a system error, improper operation, or virus attack. Normally when we find the following symptoms using the computer, we can tell that a raw hard drive error is probably occurring.
- The file system is raw
- The file names contain unrecognized characters and can't be opened
- The "This drive-in disk is not formatted. Do you want to format now?" alert appears
- "You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it", the error message arises
Learning what RAW file system is, causes of RAW hard drive and more errors of RAW drive, please go to this page and get what you want: What Is a RAW Drive.
Part 1: Free Download RAW Hard Drive Recovery
Formatting can usually solve the problem. But hard drive formatting may cause all data to be lost from the hard drive. This is the reason why you need a Raw drive recovery program to help you retrieve all data back.
Recoverit Data Recovery is the best option for you to recover data from Raw hard drive. It is a reliable RAW disk recovery tool to help you recover various types of files from your Raw hard drive, including pictures, audio files, videos, documents, and more. With its user-friendly interface and safe recovery methods, you just need to connect Raw hard drive to your computer and launch the RAW data recovery program to scan it.
- Recover lost or deleted files, photos, audio, music, emails from RAW hard drive effectively, safely and completely.
- Supports data recovery from recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera, and camcorders.
- Supports to recover data for sudden deletion, formatting, hard drive corruption, virus attack, system crash under different situations.
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Part 2: How to Recover Data from RAW Drive
1. Video Tutorial on RAW Data Recovery
If you want to do RAW drive recovery, the video tutorial can help you get to know the steps on how to recover data from the RAW drive in the shortest possible time.
Recent Videos from Recoverit
View More >2. How to Perform RAW Disk Recovery
Free download Recoverit RAW Data Recovery on your computer and connect your external hard drive to it. Follow the next simple steps to start recovering data from the RAW drive.
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- Select data lost scenario to recover
To recover data from RAW hard drive, if it is an internal hard drive, you can select "Deleted Files Recovery" to start. If you want to recover data from RAW external hard drive, you need to choose "External Devices Recovery".
- Select the Raw hard drive
Recoverit Raw Data Recovery will list all the hard drives detected here for you. Select the RAW hard drive on which your lost data is located and click "Start" to go on.
- Scan your Raw hard drive to search for files on it
A quick scan will be launched immediately by Recoverit RAW Disk Recovery. Just wait for a few minutes and you can take a look at the scanned results.
You can also go to the "All-Around Recovery" mode if the quick scan can't help you get your wanted data. It will have your lost files deep scanned.
- Recover data from Raw hard drive
When the scan is over, all recoverable files on your Raw drive will be displayed in the program window. You can preview them, select the wanted ones, and click "Recover" to save the selected data on your computer.
- It is recommended to save the recovered files on other disks to avoid data being overwritten.
- "Raw recovery" does not show original file names and paths compared to other recovery options.
Sometimes we will assume that it is hardly possible to get something done, especially when we have no idea about it. For example, recovering data from a RAW drive. However, as you can see, Recoverit Data Recovery makes the RAW data recovery a breeze. With simple clicks, you can accomplish the RAW recovery job. You can also use it to retrieve files from RAW partition, external hard disk, SD memory card, USB flash drive, and so forth. Now, free download the RAW disk recovery software, and get your data back!
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