How to Perform RAW USB drive Recovery

Let's read one case before we start to discuss our topic RAW USB drive recovery.

"I have a USB flash drive which has data on it but when I plug it in, a prompt appears asking to format the drive. I need to recover the data from this USB. It is approximately 500MB, and the USB shows as a RAW file system. Does anyone know how I can recover my data?"

Reason of RAW USB drive

As we know, when we use some USB drives such as USB external hard disk, USB memory card, USB smart media or other storage media, we may encounter the following situation(s).

Invalid media type reading drive. Abort, Retry, Fail?
File system is displayed as "RAW".
Windows may show "disk not formatted. Do you want to format now?"
File names contain "weird" characters.
"Sector not found" messages.

The reason for the above situations is that the partition of the USB drive is corrupt or damaged under Windows environment, that is why the guy raises the question in the data recovery forum, and the following is the most usual symptom.

When we happen to meet one of those problems while using a USB drive, we cannot access and open files such as documents, photos, emails, etc. If we check the property of the drive, it shows that file system is RAW.

Method of RAW USB drive recovery

When we search for a method for RAW USB drive recovery, we can't just perform format directly as we are asked, because it will result in overwrite or damage to the files in the data area of the RAW USB drive, and we will lose chance to recover files from the RAW USB drive. What we should do is to recover the files from RAW USB drive first before we perform format for RAW USB drive recovery.

Under Windows environment, we cannot recover files from RAW USB drive by hand, we should seek assistance from a third tool. Now what we need is data recovery software for RAW USB drive recovery, here EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard is recommended.

Steps of RAW USB drive recovery

Data Recovery Wizard is professional data recovery software to recover data loss due to format, deletion or recover lost data due to partition loss or damage, software crash, virus infection, unexpected shutdown or other unknown reasons from hardware RAID and storage media such as hard drive, USB drive, SD card, memory card, etc. under Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.

Step A: Launch Data Recovery Wizard and choose "Complete Recovery" for RAW USB drive recovery.

Step B: Choose the volume of the RAW USB drive and click "NEXT" to start searching, then you will see a list of volumes where data loss possibly happens. After that, Data Recovery Wizard will allow you to choose 6 volumes at best to recover. And then, press "NEXT" button, it will launch the "Building Directory" procedure to search the files. You will see file/folder tree very soon.

Step C: Choose and preview the files on the RAW USB drive and press the "Next" button. And then select a path and press the "NEXT" button to save files.

After we recover files from RAW USB drive and save to another place, we could perform format now, and then move the files to the USB drive. RAW USB drive recovery is finished successfully now.

We also could use "Deleted File Recovery" to recover files after deletion from USB drive, or use "Partition Recovery" to recovery files if the partition of USB drive is corrupt.

If you encounter that the USB drive changes to RAW, just use the demo version to preview files, and purchase a full version to recover files for RAW USB drive recovery.

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For better data security, our free backup software - EASEUS Todo Backup will help you a lot. It provides easy-to-use interface to backup and restore your system, disk and partition in a few minutes.

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