Get “chkdsk is not available for raw drives” when Repairing SD Card? How to Solve?
20 June 2019Amanda J. Brook Senior Product Manager
Summary When you were trying to run the CHKDSK command to fix the SD card, the Windows system reminded you that “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives” and stopped fixing this RAW device. Why and how for this situation?
When we are trying to fix the SD card, the CHKDSK command cannot work for the RAW file system and the operating system will tell you that “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives”.
As we know, the RAW drive cannot be accessible or readable. But, why it becomes RAW? Here are some common scenarios of a RAW drive:
The SD card is not formatted.
The file system cannot be supported by the operating system.
There exists too many error or bad blocks in the SD card.
The damaged file system contains logic faults.
The RAW file system cannot be recognized in Window or Mac OS, so the data in it cannot be read. Therefore, if you want to keep the intact data, you should recover them before fixing the SD card.
Recover SD Card by Renee Undeleter
Renee Undeleter is professional software for data recovery. It supports to recover various files, such as the deleted / formatted SD card. Three scan modes, fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan, can fulfill your different scenarios!
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Supported System Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000 and Mac OS X10.6, 10.7, 10.8.
Easy to use Simple steps to recover data
Recover different file formats Support to recover multiple file types
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① Download and install Renee Undeleter. Then, connect the SD card to your PC.
② Launch the software and select one of the scan modes. In this example, we select [Fast Partition Scan].
③ Select the target SD card and click [Next].
④ Select [Fast Scan] or [Deep Scan]. The former one can save time while the latter one can scan the disk thoroughly.
⑤ Select the file types. If you are not sure, please select [Default Settings].
⑥ Wait for scanning. Then, check the target files and click [Recover].
⑦ Select a folder and click [Recover] to save the data.
Note!Don’t save the recovered data into the SD card for fear that the following steps will clear the data. Beside, Renee Undeleter can recover the damaged SD card. Click for “How to Fix and Recover Corrupted SD Card”.
Fix SD Card that Gets “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives”
If the file system is damaged or corrupted, the SD card will be RAW. Then, the CHKDSK command is unable to fix the RAW SD card. Therefore, we should switch to the other ways.
Format Again
① Right-click at the Start menu and select [Disk Management].
② Right-click at the target SD card and select [Format].
③ Select the target file system and check [Perform a quick format]. Then, click [OK].
④ The Windows system will warn you that the data saved on the SD card are going to be erased. Click [OK] to continue and wait for formatting.
Fix by Diskpart Command
① Search [cmd].
② Right-click at [Command Prompt] and select [Run as administrator].
③ Type and press Enter to run the command [diskpart]. Then, type [list disk] to list all the available drives in PC.
④ Type [select disk n]. “n” is the name of the target disk shown on the last step.
⑤ Type and run the command [clean]. Then, the target disk will be erased.
⑥ Type [create partition primary] to create a partition. Then, type [active] to mark it as the active partition.
⑦ Finally, type [format fs=FAT32 quick] to format the SD card. “fs=” follows the target file system.
It is believed that you follow these steps to format the SD card and create a new partition. At that time, the SD card will not be RAW but be FAT32, NTFS and the other file systems you choose.
