Brief Introduction to RAW Hard Drive
What’s RAW? To be specific, RAW is the default file system for CD-ROMs recognized by Windows. In DVD burning methods, there is a RAW mode referring to burn after reading the complete sector data. It can extract not only users’ data but also data of sub-channels. However, not all burners give support for RAW mode.
Literally, the hard drive that has not been formatted by the NT file system, such as FAT and NTFS, is called the RAW hard drive. However, from this perspective, nothing should be included in a RAW hard drive because no drive can be put into use for saving data before it is actually formatted.
Then, why are there so many questions related to how to recover data from RAW hard drive? In fact, that is because a hard drive can turn into RAW after suffering from problems like virus attacks and improper operations.
RAW hard drive problem includes two situations. One is that the whole hard drive has become RAW; the other is one partition of a hard drive turns into RAW.

RAW Hard Drive – the Whole Disk Is RAW
If the operating system you are running now can’t recognize the file system of your hard drive at a certain moment, the state of the hard drive becomes RAW. At this time, no one is allowed to access any part of the hard drive. Meanwhile, its capacity, used space and unused space will all be shown as “zero”. That is to say, all data originally saved in that “RAW” disk is lost. You can neither see them nor transfer them to a safe place for further use. What a tragedy it will be if it includes files of great importance.
It is worth noting that both internal hard drive and external hard drive can become RAW because of inappropriate operation or virus invasion.
RAW Partition – Only One Partition Is Inaccessible
When damage is only brought to one partition on a hard drive, you’ll find except for this partition, whose file system is RAW now, other partitions are in normal state. You click on the drive and an error message – “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable” or “You need to format the disk before you can use it” – will pop up to show that this drive is not accessible.
In this case, choosing to format the drive will help you enter it successfully. However, the formatting will do harm to data in it and possibly all data will be gone because of that. So quit the idea of formatting the RAW partition to make it work properly since this will be done at the cost of losing useful data.
6 Possible Causes for a Hard Drive to Become RAW
In general, the cause for a result can be various. Here we list six common causes of your RAW hard drive.
1. Hard disk drive cable problem: in rare cases, a hard drive may be shown as RAW in a computer because of cable issues. For instance, when the cable is broken, the hard drive can’t be listed in a computer normally. In addition, if the interface of an external hard drive has bad contact, we get no chance to see it listed on the computer.
2. Bad sectors: if you click on the letter of the hard drive, only to find the responding speed is very slow, it means that there are bad sectors in the key area of the hard drive. Under this circumstance, a professional tool is required to mirror the hard drive. We are supposed to carry out data recovery only when this step has been done for security considerations.
3. File system structural damage: if the RAW problems occur without an obvious sign or reason, users need to analyze the causes manually. If users are not proficient in such work, they can resort to professional tools like WINHEX.
4. Partition table damage: no matter what the reason is, once the partition table of the hard drive has been damaged, the whole hard drive will become RAW. The OS can only identify different partitions with the help of a partition table, which records the size, location, type, and other information of every partition in the disk.
5. Reinstallation or restoration of the operating system: users may choose to reinstall the OS they are running now or restore it to the initial state for different reasons. And the hard drive may become RAW.
6. Virus attack: computer viruses are widespread throughout the world. They should be responsible for any undesired problems, such as document loss, photo missing, partition loss, system crash, and file system crash. The hard drive will be turned into a RAW state after viruses attack the hard drive and change/delete some vital parameters and information of the hard drive.
3 Possible Causes for a Partition to Become RAW
Users may see the following errors when they are trying to get access to a hard drive partition so as to make use of data in it.
- “The disk in drive F: is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?”
- “You need to format the disk in drive D: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?”
- “This 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.”
Do you know why a hard drive partition is inaccessible and how to solve this issue? You can read this post to learn the reasons and corresponding solutions: Can’t Access a Partition in Windows? Solutions Are Here.
Please don’t format the partition as the prompt suggested and there’s no need for being freaked out when the above errors show up. You need to calm down and do the best you can to try to recover data from RAW hard drive. However, before taking action to get back missing data, we’d better have an overall analysis of the probable reasons leading to RAW partition trouble.
1. Virus invasion: if part of the hard drive partition table with partition information like partition starting position and ending position has been damaged or corrupted because of computer virus infection, the corresponding partition will be given a RAW file system.
2. System reinstallation: if the current system partition is formatted with FAT, but it is changed to NTFS when we replace the old operating system with a new one, you may find the file system of the system partition can’t be recognized by OS anymore.
3. Number of hard drives and partitions: the fact that too many hard drives and partitions have been used in one computer simultaneously will probably bring RAW partition issues as well.
To sum up, the reasons for a RAW partition vary a lot and we can hardly know the accurate cause of it. All we need to and can do is spare no effort to try to figure out the real reason.
Recover Data from RAW Hard Drive/RAW Partition
Let’s start with a true example of how to recover RAW drive:
Q:
"Hi, I had extra space on a hard drive so I extended it in disk management but I did not format it as I had data on it. And now it is showing as a RAW HD and I cannot open it without formatting the drive. Is there any way to recover the date that I know is still on it? "Tomshardware
First of all, you must stay calm even if the whole drive becomes RAW. Do not format the hard drive once you find it becomes RAW. You should first try to recover data from RAW hard drive with the help of several security data recovery tools.
RAW Data Recovery with MiniTool Power Data Recovery
MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be an optimal RAW drive recovery software. This software allows you to recover RAW partition/hard drive, formatted partition/disk, and more. You can get the MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free to see if it can detect and find the required files from your RAW hard drive.
Step 1. Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery on your computer.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
If you need to recover data from a RAW external hard drive, you should connect the device to your computer first, then launch the software to enter its main interface. Choose the target drive to scan. Typically, the drive or partition with a RAW file system shows as Unidentified in this software.

Step 2. Wait for the scan process to complete. You can browse the file list during scanning but do not interrupt the scan process in the midway. This software has several built-in features that help to locate and verify files among numerous ones.
- Type: Files are classified by their types and file formats; thus, you can pinpoint a certain type of files quickly.
- Filter: You can set some filter criteria to filter out unmatched items, such as file size, file type, file category, and file modified date.
- Search: If you want to find a specific file and remember its name, input its name into the search box and hit Enter.
- Preview: If there are several files after filtering, the Preview feature helps to verify file content before saving them.

Step 3. Tick the files you need to restore and click Save. In the prompt window, choose a new save path to avoid data overwriting. When the RAW data recovery process is completed, a small window will prompt. You can close this software and head to the destination to check the recovered files.

The free edition of this RAW drive recovery software provides 1GB of free file recovery capacity. To break this limit, you can visit this License Comparison page to choose one edition that suits your requirements best.
How to Fix RAW Partition/RAW Hard Drive
After completing the RAW drive recovery task, you can format the RAW partition or the RAW drive to make it work normally. Here are several ways to fix a RAW partition or disk.
Way 1. Format the RAW Partition in Disk Management
Step 1. Right-click on the Windows icon and choose Disk Management.
Step 2. Locate the target partition and right-click on it. Choose Format from the context menu.
Step 3. Modify the required settings and click OK to start formatting.
Way 2. Format the RAW Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard is an all-in-one partition manager. Apart from formatting the partition and disk, it also supports wiping partitions, merging partitions, and other operations. You can get this tool by clicking the download button below.
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 1. Launch the software. If you need to format a removable device, you can connect it to your computer and click the Refresh button to make it recognized.
Step 2. Choose the RAW partition and select Format.

Step 3. Opt for a compatible file system and click OK to format the RAW partition.
Step 4. Click the Apply button to complete the suspend process.
Bottom Line
This is the end of why RAW drive appears and how to recover data from RAW hard drive. After reading the above content, you must have noticed that lots of factors can lead to the hard drive RAW problem. However, although RAW drive data recovery can be finished completely sometimes, it is still advisable for you to back up hard drive regularly. In this way, you can get rid of the terrible feeling of regretting of losing valuable data permanently. What’s more, just by resorting to the backups directly, you can get back missing data quickly and easily.
In a word, data backup is a very important way to protect significant data. But if no backup is available, ask MiniTool Power Data Recovery for help, it won’t disappoint you.