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19 December 2023  Jennifer Thatcher  Technology Manager of Test Dept.
 

Summary
Learn how to solve the issue "external hard drive raw fix" and recover data from the hard drive when it cannot be opened normally and displays a RAW file system in Disk Management. Discover the solution here.



Table of contents

table iconI. The reason why the external hard disk becomes a RAW file system
table iconII. Use Renee Undeleter to restore data in RAW external hard drive
table iconIII. How to repair RAW external hard disk?
external hard drive raw fix

I. The reason why the external hard disk becomes a RAW file system

When the external hard disk becomes RAW, there may be the following prompts. For example, when the user tries to open the external hard disk to access the files in it, it prompts “The volume does not contain a recognizable file system”.
this volume does not contain a recognizable file system
At this time, right-click the (Start) menu and select (Disk Management), and you can see that the file system of the external hard disk is displayed as RAW.
disk show to be raw
A RAW file system is a state of a hard drive or other storage device that contains an unknown file system. This means that the drive does not have a recognized file system, rendering it unable to store data or access any existing files or folders.
So what causes the external hard disk to become RAW? There may be several reasons:
● The external hard disk is not formatted or the format of the file system is incorrect.
● The file system of the external hard disk is not supported by the current operating system.
● There are a lot of data errors or bad sectors in the external hard disk.
● The file system structure of the external hard disk is damaged, and the logic is faulty.
If your external hard disk is showing up as RAW, it means that it is not recognized by Windows, Mac, and other systems. This can make it impossible to access the data stored inside. To avoid losing any important data, it is highly recommended to use professional data recovery software to retrieve the data and then repair the mobile hard drive.

II. Use Renee Undeleter to restore data in RAW external hard drive

1. What is Renee Undeleter?

Renee undeleter is a software specially used to restore various data files. When you accidentally delete important files, empty the recycle bin, or format the disk/storage, you can use this tool to retrieve the lost data. The software covers four functional modules, including file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery and image creation, which can help you solve all data loss problems in an all-round way.
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2. How to use Renee Undeleter to recover data from RAW external hard disk?

After the external hard disk becomes RAW, although it cannot be opened normally in the file explorer, we can see that the hard disk is connected to the computer in the disk management. In this case, we can use Renee Undeleter to scan and restore it . The specific operation steps are as follows:
Step 1: Connect the external hard disk to the computer, download and install Renee Undeleter on the computer and run it, and select the (Whole Disk Scan) option on the main interface.
Note: Do not install on the disk that needs to restore data, so as not to cause data overwriting.
select whole disk scan to scan disk in renee undeleter
Data recovery function introduction:
Fast Partition Scan- Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.
Whole Partition Scan- Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.
Whole Disk Scan- It can analyze and obtain partition information, and fully scan the entire partition.
Image Creation- You can create a mirror image for a partition to back up the current partition state.
Step 2: Next, select the hard disk device that needs to recover data. After the selection is complete, click (Next).
select a disk to recover in renee undeleter
Step 3: Please wait patiently for the scan. This process will find out all the partitions in the hard disk, and then the “Select the partition you need to scan” window will pop up, and you can select a specific partition to scan. If not selected, all partitions will be scanned automatically, and more files can be found, but it will take longer.
Step 4: You can preview the files during the scanning process. If all the required files have been found, you can check the files to be restored, and then click the (Recover) button to restore the files to the disk of another computer.
select taget files to recover with renee undeleter

III. How to repair RAW external hard disk?

The file system type of the external hard disk is shown as RAW due to an incorrect or damaged file system. As a result, the chkdsk command tool may not be able to fix the issue. However, there are other methods that can be used to repair the external hard disk. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss some commonly used repair techniques.

1. Repair by disk error check

Step 1: Open “My Computer/This Computer”, right click on the RAW drive and select (Properties). Switch to the (Tools) option in the Properties window and click the (Check) button.
go to usb properties and check it
Step 2: Next, select the (Scan drive) option in the error checking interface, then wait for the scan and repair it according to the prompts.
scan drive on Windows 8/10

2. Repair by reformatting

The formatting operation can reset the Windows-recognizable file system for the external hard disk, and the steps are as follows:
Step 1: Right-click the Start menu and click (Disk Management).
open windows disk management
Step 2: Right-click the external hard disk whose file system is RAW, and select (Format).
format raw disk
Step 3: Select the file system, check (Perform a quick format), and click (OK). If the external hard disk is used on the Windows system, it is recommended to choose the NTFS file system, and you can also check: the characteristics and differences of FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT.
quick Format
Step 4: The formatting operation will prompt you to clear all the data in the external hard disk, click (OK), and then wait for the formatting to complete. After the formatting operation is completed, the problem that the external hard disk becomes RAW can be solved.

3. Use the diskpart command to repair

Step 1: Search Command Prompt by typing (cmd) in the search bar on the left side of the taskbar.
run as administrator
Step 2: Right-click (Command Prompt) in the search results and select (Run as administrator).
Step 3: Enter the (diskpart) command and press the (Enter) key to run it. Then enter (list disk) to view the disks connected to the current computer. Note: You need to press the (Enter) key after entering a command.
list disk
Step 4: Then enter (select disk 1) to select the disk to be formatted (here the removable hard disk is disk 1). Please note: The entered number depends on your USB drive.
Step 5: Enter the (clean) command, it shows that diskpart has successfully cleared the disk, which means clearing all data in the disk, including partitions, volumes, etc.
clean the disk
Step 6: Enter (creat partition primary) to create a primary partition, and enter (active) to mark the partition as an active partition.
create a primary partition
Step 7: Finally, enter the command (format fs=ntfs quick) to format the external hard disk, fs=ntfs means to format the external hard disk as NTFS file system, or use FAT32, exFAT instead of NTFS.
format the hard disk as NTFS