Hello everybody!
This video is about recovering a disk or a
USB drive with RAW file system.
Let’s have a look at the situation when
there is some data on such disk that should
be saved, or if there is no important information
on a hard disk or a USB drive and formatting
them is not a problem at all.
If a 
disk switched to RAW, Windows will show it
together with other partitions.
But if you try opening it, the computer will
show an error and suggest formatting it, or
you will see a notice that the file system
of this volume cannot be recognized.
If you open the built-in Windows tool - Disk
Management - you will see that its file system
is shown as RAW.
Actually, there is no such file system as
RAW.
If the disk receives such format type, it
means that Windows can’t understand whether
its file system is NTFS, FAT or FAT32.
It happens to new or faulty hard disks.
When it happens to disks which have been used
for some time already, the reasons include
system failures, power issues or switching
off the computer in a wrong way.
If the volume containing the operating system
is damaged, Windows won’t boot, and you
will see messages like “Reboot and selеct
proper boot device” or “Operating System
not found.”
Let’s begin with a USB drive or a non-system
disk
• that has switched to RAW format, and such
partition doesn’t have any important or
valuable data, or the user has already copied
all important files.
Another case is that the data on the disk
is not important, so you can fix the RAW disk
or USB drive by formatting them.
You can do it in any way that you find convenient:
by clicking the Format button when trying
to open a RAW disk, right-clicking on it and
selecting the Format option, or by using the
Disk Management tool.
When you do it, all data will be erased, but
the disk will be working again.
• If Windows doesn’t suggest formatting
the disk when you try opening it, and you
can’t format it in any other way, you can
fix the problem (without keeping the files)
by using the command “Clean” and the Diskpart
tool.
I will not go into details, as there is a
good video about it.
Watch it by following the link in the description:
If you have any problems after connecting
a new hard disk, or it doesn’t appear in
This PC folder, you can watch another video
in our channel to solve the problem.
Find the link in the description:
It’s much more unpleasant when the disk
that suddenly turned into RAW had contained
important data - then you have not only to
format it, but also to restore the partition
containing the data.
In this case, don’t format the RAW disk
as it will erase all the information.
Instead, do the following to have your files
back:
 Launch the Command prompt as Administrator
 Enter the command chkdsk required_disk_letter:
/f.
 After the check is complete, the computer
will restore the damaged sectors and the NTFS
file system in the damaged volume.
 Attention!
This method is good if the USB drive or disk
had NTFS format.
 Let’s go back to the disk.
As we can see, it is working.
All the files it had before the failure are
still there.
If the file system of the RAW disk was FAT
before, you will see this error when trying
to perform the command chkdsk.
What if the command chkdsk didn’t work properly
for some reason, or the RAW disk had FAT file
system before?
Nevertheless, your files from such disk can
be recovered.
In fact, they are not deleted yet.
It’s just a file system failure.
How can you do that?
• Here is a RAW disk, and naturally, we
can’t access the data on it.
• To restore the data, run Hetman Partition
Recovery
You can find a link to download this utility
in the description:
• Select the disk having RAW format.
• Click on the disk and select “Full analysis.”
• After the analysis is over, the program
will show all partitions.
Click on the one you need, and you can see
the files stored there in the right-hand window.
• If there are many files on the RAW disk,
and you need to find and recover a particular
one, click on Content-Aware Analysis.
It groups the files to folders by their format.
• You can use the preview windows if you
want.
• To restore them, drag the necessary files
to the Recovery List and click “Recovery.”
• Select the method to save files and specify
the path
• Recovery.
• The files have been recovered.
If you have already formatted such a disk,
and only then did you understand that important
data is gone, you can restore it anyway with
the method I have just showed.
What to do if the system disk is damaged and
Windows won’t boot?
There are two options.
One: Take this hard disk out of your computer
and connect it to another PC.
When it’s there, you can do all those things
you do to a non-system disk: fix the problem
with the command chkdsk, or restore data like
I showed you in this video.
Option two will be your choice when there
aren’t any other computers or if you have
a Windows installation disk of the same bitness.
In this case:
• Start the computer with a bootable flash
drive or disk
There is a special video about creating a
bootable media.
You will find the link in the description:
• In the wizard, select “Repair” instead
of “Install.”
• Windows Recovery Environment will open.
• Select “Troubleshooting / Command Prompt”
• Enter the command chkdsk required_disk_letter:
/f.
In the Recovery Environment, partition letters
may differ from names of logical disks.
To make sure there is no mistake, open the
list of partitions in the command prompt.
To do it, enter diskpart / list volume.
In the list, you wil see which disk is the
system disk.
That is all for now.
Hit the Like button below and subscribe to
our channel, if this video helped you repair
a RAW disk or recover data from there.
Ask questions in your comments.
Thank you for watching.
Good luck.
