Fixes for The Type of the File System Is RAW, CHKDSK Is Not Available for RAW Drives

Applies to: Local/external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, Memory cards, and more.

"The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."

You may get the "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives." error when you attempt to use the CHKDSK command to check and repair disk errors, like file system errors and bad sectors.

Feel familiar with the error message shown in the image above? This message means you failed to run CHKDSK on your drive due to a problem with the file system of your device.

What Does RAW File System Mean?

The RAW file system is a file system that your computer can't recognize. The following are the reasons your hard drive or storage device like a USB flash drive or memory card’s file system goes RAW:

• The file system is missing or damaged
• The RAW drive has not been formatted with a file system
• The computer can't recognize the current file system of the drive

When your hard drive or storage medium becomes RAW, running CHKDSK will fail and you will get a message that says "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives." If you try to open the drive, you may get the notification "You need to format the disk in drive X before you can use it. Do you want to format it?" Also, you cannot open your drive and access files stored on the device.

How to Fix "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."

When the file system of your drive or external storage device goes RAW, it becomes inaccessible and unusable. To make it ready for data storage again, you need to convert RAW to NTFS or other Windows-compatible file systems by formatting. When you format your drive, you can assign a new file system to it and thus make it usable. However, as you may know, formatting erases the existing files on the storage medium. Thus, the procedures to fix the error "the type of the file system is RAW" are:

• Recover data from the RAW drive
• Format the drive

You can directly format your hard drive if there is no data on it or you don't need the files stored on it.

Procedure 1. Recover Data from the RAW Drive

Although you can't access the existing files on a RAW drive, a hard drive recovery software tool like EaseUS Data Recovery Software can. Not only does this software help recover deleted data, formatted data, lost partitions, but it also helps recover files from the drives that have gone RAW and have thus become inaccessible.

To recover data from your drive or storage device that reports RAW:

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.

Procedure 2. Convert RAW to NTFS/FAT32 by Formatting

After retrieving all the files saved on the RAW drive, you may now format the drive using one of the three ways below:

Method 1. Format RAW Drive with File Explorer

Step 1. Open This PC, right-click the RAW partition, and select Format.

Step 2. Select a file system (NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT) for your drive and click Start.

Step 3. Select Yes in the prompt to start formatting your drive.

Method 2. Repair RAW to NTFS/FAT32 Using Diskpart

Diskpart is a command-line utility that you can use to create, delete, and modify a computer's disk partitions, including formatting the partition.

Step 1. Press Windows + R, type diskpart, and hit Enter.

Step 2. Enter the following commands hitting Enter after each line:

list volume
select volume X ("X" means the volume number of the RAW drive)
format fs=ntfs quick (or format fs=fat32 quick)
exit

Method 3. Change RAW to NTFS/FAT32 with A Format Tool

If you prefer to keep it simple, use free partition software - EaseUS Partition Master to format your drive. In addition to what formats the Windows OS supports, this tool supports EXT2 and EXT3 as well. The other tool features include the ability to merge, check, and delete partitions.

To learn how to format a hard drive using EaseUS Partition Master, you may refer to the article about how to format a hard drive in Windows 10.

The Bottom Line

There are several reasons the "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives" error occurs. Your PC might be infected with a virus, there's a format failure, you accidentally shut down your PC, power outages, and many more factors are responsible for this error.

Luckily, you can recover files from your RAW inaccessible drives and then format the drives to make them reusable. If you found this guide useful, we'd appreciate it if you share it with the people who need this guide.