Raw Drive Recovery: How to Recover Data from RAW Drive with Ease

What's RAW Drive Recovery

What does RAW drive mean? For a non-system disk, when you try to open it in Windows Explorer, it prompts you a window asking you to format the disk before you can use it. It's very likely that the disk has file system errors at the moment.

The "Format disk" usually fixes the hard drive problem, but it deletes data on it. If you refuse to format the disk, you'll get an error message "The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted."

This is quite a common hard drive issue in Windows 10/8.1/8/7. When you cannot open a local drive or a removable disk, like a USB flash drive or SD card in this way, do not worry. It's usually because the hard disk file system becomes RAW. Go to Windows Disk Management(This PC/My Computer - Manage - Disk Management), and you will see the RAW drive like this.

Besides, there are many other situations that suggest your hard drive becomes RAW. For example:

(1) Run chkdsk command, it says "the type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drive."

(2) The computer cannot boot from the system disk, and it says, "Operating system not found".

In conclusion, many reasons would turn a new or used hard drive into RAW, and we list some usual reasons here.

• System failure
• Power issues
• Disconnection without safe ejection
• Power off a computer in the wrong way
• HDD/USB/Memory card malfunction, bad sectors, or corruption

If it's a new hard drive that you don't use at all, directly format the disk and convert RAW to NTFS or other file systems as instructed. This will bring it back to normal. However, if it's a hard drive that carries plenty of data, you need to use professional RAW drive recovery software to recover data from RAW drive or partition. 

Read on and learn how to recover data from RAW drive with a professional RAW drive recovery tool. We also introduce effective methods to help you fix a RAW HDD/USB flash drive/pen drive/SD card without losing any data. We hope all of you can happily solve the RAW drive problem in the end.

How to Recover Data from RAW Drive with EaseUS RAW Drive Recovery Software

It's a pity to see a RAW drive, and you have to format it to make it usable again. Formatting a hard disk helps allocate a recognizable file system like NTFS, FAT, FAT32 to it, but disk formatting will completely remove data, and it's impossible to restore the lost data in the recycle bin. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you make a RAW data recovery to export data from the raw drive before formatting. 

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is such capable hard disk data recovery software, and it's super easy and quick to scan and recover data from RAW drive. 

One good reason you must choose EaseUS RAW drive recovery software is that even you formatted the disk at first, you can still recover files from formatted hard drive without a hitch. It works as an all-round expert in retrieving data after deletion, partition loss, disk formatting, or virus/trojan attack.

Video Tutorial: Recover Data from RAW Drive

EaseUS RAW drive recovery step-by-step guide:

Note: To restore all your lost files, install EaseUS data recovery software on another disk instead of the RAW disk where you lost files.

Step 1. Locate and Scan the RAW Hard Drive

Locate the RAW drive with its original drive letter and then click "Scan". If the RAW drive has lost its label, it will be detected as "Lost Partition", select it and click "Scan". 

The program will automatically scan all lost files and data on the RAW drive.

Step 2. Find and Preview the Found Data on the RAW Drive

When the scan process finishes, find lost RAW drive data in "Other Lost Files" or "Files Lost Original Name". The "Filter" and "Search" features can also help locate specific types of files with ease.

You can double-click a file to preview it. 

Step 3. Restore and Save Data Out of the RAW Drive

Choose the files found from RAW Drive and click "Recover" to save the items to a new location. Click "OK" to start the recovery.

How to Fix RAW Drive Without Losing Data or Without Formatting

After recovering data from RAW partition with EaseUS raw data recovery program, you can continue to fix the RAW HDD, SD card, or USB drive by formatting in several ways. For example, you can use EaseUS free partition management tool to format the RAW drive to FAT, NTFS, EXT effortlessly.

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Partition Master.

Right-click on the RAW partition or RAW external hard drive/USB/SD card that you need to format and choose "Format".

Step 2. Format RAW Partition and reset the file system.

Assign a new partition label, set the file system to NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3, and cluster size to the selected partition, then click "OK".

Step 3. In the Warning window, click "OK" to continue.

Step 4. Execute the operations.

Click the "Execute Operation" button in the top-left corner to view all the changes, then click "Apply" to start formatting your RAW partition/USB/SD/external hard drive.

In addition to formatting partition, EaseUS Partition Master Free provides other full around partition and disk management solutions for your Windows computer, for instances: Resize/move partitions, create, format, delete, and merge partitions; copy and clone an entire disk, convert FAT to NTFS partition, convert MBR disk to GPT or GPT disk to MBR, and so on. 

Except for applying EaseUS Partition Master to format a RAW drive, you can also use Disk Management, Windows File Explorer, and Diskpart command to finish the job. 

How to Fix RAW Drive Without Formatting

If formatting doesn't work, or if you don't want to format your RAW hard drive in terms of data security, how to repair RAW partition without data loss? Here is the way out by turn to EaseUS 1-on-1 remote manual assistance. The EaseUS technical experts can fix your RAW SD card, USB flash drive, pen drive, or external hard drive without formatting, ensure that the repaired partition is the same as the original drive, and there will be no loss of data. Any complex data loss problems can be solved.

To Sum Up

The possible causes of a RAW drive might be bad sectors on the device, corrupted partition table, virus, or malware attack. By using a reliable RAW drive recovery tool, like EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, you can recover data from RAW partition with ease.

Although RAW drive data recovery can be finished completely sometimes, it is still advisable for you to note the following things to avoid RAW drive again:

• Safely eject the external drive
• Back up important data regularly
• Use the advanced file system, such as NTFS file system

RAW Drive Recovery Tips  

See more about the RAW file system and how to recover data from RAW drive.

What is a raw drive?

RAW file system indicates a state of your hard drive, which has no or unknown file system. Regardless of whether the memory card, computer hard drive, or other device displays as RAW drive, you cannot access the data inside. The RAW file system is not a standard file system. When a hard drive shows RAW, the operating system cannot recognize it. The quick way to repair the RAW file system is to format the drive, but sometimes it may not result.

How do I recover files from a raw drive?

Recover files from a RAW drive with EaseUS RAW drive recovery software in 3 steps:

Step 1. Locate and scan the RAW hard drive.

Step 2. Find and preview found data in the RAW drive.

Step 3. Restore and save RAW drive data.

How do I restore a raw partition to NTFS?

You can change RAW to NTFS using Disk Management.

• Right-click the Start button, choose Disk Management. 
• Find your RAW storage device (SD memory card, hard disk, USB flash drive, etc.).  
• Right-click on the RAW drive, choose Format. Then, follow the on-screen instruction to format your device to the NTFS file system.

How do I fix a RAW drive without formatting?

To fix a RAW drive without formatting or without losing data, you can turn to the 1-on-1 manual assistance of EaseUS for help. The EaseUS technical experts give you help for tough data loss situations like reformatting drive, RAW disk, partition loss, repartition failures, and system boot error. They can fix your RAW storage device without formatting and make sure the repaired partition is the same as the original drive.