How to fix RAW drive?
A RAW drive is a logical drive for which Disk Management shows the RAW file system in its properties.
In fact, RAW means the ABSENCE of any file system, which happens when the operating system driver,
having read the metadata on the disk, knows that this is a logical disk, which means it must a priori have a file system;
however, when trying to read it, the driver either does not find any metadata at all in the places where they should be,
or the metadata is recognized as corrupted, and, accordingly, the file system is not opened using it.
There are two approaches to fix a RAW drive - one is safe, involving the use of data recovery software,
and the second is dangerous and not recommended, associated with editing the metadata on the volume in the hope that it will be possible to fix it,
and the operating system itself will open the file system after editing metadata on the volume.
You can read more about data recovery from a RAW disk,
and about unsafe editing of metadata in the hope of repairing a RAW disk,
here we discuss the main differences between these two approaches.
Criteria |
Data recovery |
Editing metadata |
Read-only mode |
Yes |
No |
Requires skills and knowledge |
Minimum |
Expert level knowledge of storage systems |
Time to get data |
Minute to hour1 |
N/A |
Result |
Almost always2 |
Unpredictable |
Try other solutions |
Yes, the data on the disk does not change, you can, for example, try another software2 |
Each editing attempt reduces the chances of a successful recovery |
1 - The speed rating is given for a 64 GB flash drive.
2 - Provided that the data on the volume has not been overwritten.
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