How to read data from a RAW drive on Windows
If your drive shows up in Windows Disk Management as RAW, and you need to extract the data that was on it before it became RAW,
then the only reliable way is to use a data recovery software.
Frankly, there is still an opportunity to study damaged metadata and possible editing it: the disk was normal before the logical failure,
which means that some part of the metadata was damaged and the Windows driver no longer recognizes them, showing the disk as having no file system.
If you are interested in playing around with editing disk metadata, which, ultimately, can lead to even more data loss,
then refer here.
- Download ReclaiMe File Recovery and install it on your computer.
- Start the software and wait until all disks and volumes of your system are displayed.
- Find your drive that went RAW. Look either under the Logical drives section, or under the Physical drives section or among the drives connected via USB.
Pay attention to the RAW disk size.
- Select a RAW drive and click Start.
- Wait until the program displays the Initial scan complete message and check the files using the Preview capability of ReclaiMe File Recovery -
choose jpeg/tiff images, or pdf/docx document files.
- If the files are displayed normally,
then you can copy the data - for this you need to purchase and enter a license key by clicking on the Activate button.
If the files are broken or some data is missing, then continue scanning to the end by clicking the Resume button.
After you have successfully extracted data from a RAW disk, you can format it in Disk Management to any file system known to Windows,
such as NTFS, and use it as usual to store your data.
Still have questions?