Recover a RAW Partition

A RAW partition is essentially a former volume formatted in one of the Windows file systems, on which the file system metadata is currently corrupted. That is, the operating system driver knows that there was a file system on this volume, as it finds the boot sector from it, but when trying to open it, it encounters errors.

To repair such a RAW partition, you can proceed in two ways - try to figure out which metadata is damaged and edit them, in the hope that the operating system recognizes them as valid metadata, or restore data from the partition using data recovery software.

The first method is highly not recommended and dangerous in that it can lead to even greater data loss, as it involves writing new data to the volume. In addition, you can get so confused in editing metadata that no software can then cope with recovery. However, if you want to learn it this way, then read about our experiments - how to convert a raw disk to NTFS and how to convert a raw disk to FAT by editing metadata.

The second method is to recover data from a RAW partition - recommended and safe, since data recovery software works in read-only mode, which means there is no harm to the data on the partition. Read on the detailed instructions for recovering data from a raw disk, as well as a comparison of the most famous programs for recovering data from a RAW partition.

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