Many users have encountered these failures in the process of using computers: The SD card/USB Device/Hard disk/Partition suddenly turned into RAW, The capacity of the device become zero or an incorrect value. If you double-click on the drive, the operating system will pop up a prompt like this: “you need to format the disk in device D: before you can use it.”

Data is priceless. How can we tolerate such mistakes destroy our data? This article provides some practical solutions to hard drive and raw partition recovery, hoping to help you to protect data and raw drive fix. Moreover, know how to fix, format and recover your data from the raw drive, partition, and disk local or USB.

The RAW File System

Most of what happens when a Device becomes raw is on SD Card/USB devices, mobile phones, tablets, and other portable storage devices, followed by hard drives and partitions.

  • 1: RAW File System is an unconventionality term beside FAT and NTFS for unrecognized error warning in systems.
  • 2: RAW Drive means a hard drive with raw error
  • 3: RAW Disk is the same as the raw drive
  • 4: RAW Partition means there is a part of the drive(partition) have a raw file error.

The Type of The File System Is RAW

You may in the “raw file system” problems When you see these warning messages

Unable to access the device, the type of the file system is raw

Unable to access the device, the type of the file system is raw, you will be prompted to reformat as soon when you double-click it.

 used space and the free space are displayed as 0 bytes. The file system is RAW.

When you click the problem partition and right-click to view the properties, you will find that both the used space and the free space are displayed as 0 bytes. The file system is RAW.

disk is not available and RAW

Enter the disk management menu and you will find that the status of the problem disk is not available.

What causes the RAW Drive and RAW Partition?

There are many reasons for the problems, but they fall broadly into two categories: misuse and software failure.

1: No normal plug and unplug storage device, which will lead to equipment failure and even system failure.

2: Incomplete read / write operations, such as shutting down or suddenly losing power while copying files to the device. This could cause a failure the next time the device is turned on.

3: Choose inferior hardware product, include an inferior power source, motherboard, data line, especially inferior external hard disk box. This can lead to unstable power supplies or unstable master chips, which can lead to memory addressing errors, writing dislocations, and file system mutations.

4: Disk partition adjustment tools such as PQ, PM (PowerQuest PartitionMagic) are used, which claim to support Windows XP 7/10 but are somewhat risky. There may be problems with the device’s programs not running, the device not being able to open or even file system errors (including mutant RAW). I recommend that you use Windows’s own partition management tools.

3: HOW To Recover RAW Drive/Partition/USB/SD Card

Some people think I should format the drive at first, then using some software to recover your hard drive.

NOTICE: It may be useful in some situations, but we do NOT recommend you Format the drive all the time.

Because after formatting, especially for FAT/FAT32 partition, the data directory structure CAN NOT restore completely. Especially the critical files that are often repeatedly edited. As there are many file fragments, the recovery software loses the comparison analysis of FAT table, So recovered files can’t be opened.

Please be careful when you are doing:

  • USB raw format
  • Raw disk format
  • Sd card Raw format

iFinD Data Recovery Software is our recommendation. It‘s a powerful and easy-to-use data recovery software, your best choice for performing the raw partition recovery or raw drive recovery.

There are three steps to recover a video file using iFinD data recovery:
Step1: Downloading and install the software.
Step2: Running the software, If the partition is intact, select “Lost File Recovery.” if the partition has lost, then please select the “Lost Partition Recovery”.
Step3: Select the partition or disk which you want to recover, and click “Next.”
Step4: When the scan is complete, you can select the files you need and save them locally.

Through the above article, we know what is RAW drive and how to use data recovery software to restore RAW format data. After you save the data, you can convert RAW to NTFS or other file systems to reuse it again!

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