Raw to FAT/FAT32 Converter

Typically, such a request comes in cases where a small flash drive or memory card with data stored suddenly ceases to be recognized by the operating system as a data storage and instead it is shown in Disk Management as a RAW volume. Thus, the task is to convert the RAW file system to FAT or FAT32 back and gain access to the data that was on the media before the failure.

As in the general case with a RAW disk, this particular case has 2 solutions - safe data recovery using special software and a non-recommended and rarely described method of editing metadata on a raw volume in the hope of immediately accessing data using the operating system.

You can refer for the illustrated manual on How to recover a raw drive or just follow the general procedure for the recommended data recovery approach:

  1. Find software that can recover data from the FAT/FAT32 file system. We recommend using ReclaiMe File Recovery as a powerful software to extract data from Windows filesystems including FAT and FAT32.
  2. Download and install data recovery software.
  3. Run the program and find your RAW volume in the list of devices available for recovery.
  4. Wait until the program brings files and folders.
  5. Check the quality of the recovery using the preview function. It is recommended to check image files such as jpeg, tiff, or png, or documents such as docx, pdf, xls, since the quality of the restoration is immediately clear from them. Usually, if such selective files are displayed normally, then all other files are also normal.
  6. If the recovery quality is acceptable, then you can buy a license key and copy the data to a prepared in advance blank media.

Once the data from the raw disk is recovered, you can convert (format) the raw drive back to FAT using the built-in Disk Management utility.

If there is a desire to edit the metadata on the raw disk with the expectation of finding what is wrong and fixing it so that the operating system recognizes the volume as healthy and provides access to files and folders on it, then more information can be found at the How to convert RAW to FAT in place page.

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