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Title: Drive shows as RAW or Windows says "You need to format the disk"? Read this before you click anything
r/datarecoveryguide, maintained by the moderators. Updated October 2026.
TL;DR
Don't click Format, don't click Initialize, and don't run CHKDSK. Each of these writes to the drive and can make recovery harder or impossible.
"RAW" is a catch-all error. It only means Windows can't recognise the file system. It doesn't tell you why, and it doesn't mean your files are gone.
In most cases the data is still there. Recovery software can usually read it, as long as the drive itself is healthy.
First check the drive: in Disk Management it must show its correct capacity. If it doesn't, or if it clicks, disconnects or is very slow, stop and get advice. Software won't help a failing drive.
On an SSD, RAW is often actually good news. No operating system sends TRIM commands to a volume it can't mount, so your data is safe from TRIM, as long as you don't format it.
Windows Explorer: "You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it."
Disk Management: the partition shows as RAW instead of NTFS, exFAT or FAT32.
Opening the drive: "The volume does not contain a recognized file system", "The parameter is incorrect" or "Location is not available".
CHKDSK: "The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."
All of these say the same thing: Windows looked at the partition, couldn't make sense of the file system, and gave up. RAW is not a file system and it's not a diagnosis. It's a catch-all error. It tells you that Windows can't recognize the file system, not why.
Why does a drive show as RAW?
The cause can be anything from completely harmless to serious. The most common ones:
The file system is foreign to Windows. A drive formatted on a Mac (APFS, HFS+) or under Linux (ext4) is perfectly fine; Windows just can't read it. The same goes for an SD card that an Android phone set up as internal storage: it's encrypted and only readable in that phone.
The partition table points to the wrong place. If the partition table is damaged, Windows looks for the file system at the wrong offset and finds nothing it recognizes, while the file system itself is intact a little further on.
The boot sector is corrupt. The first sector of the partition holds the BPB (BIOS Parameter Block), which tells Windows things like the cluster size and where the file system's structures are. If that's damaged, Windows can't find its way in, even if everything behind it is fine.
Part of the file system is damaged. For example, the first 10% of the MFT (NTFS's index of all files) is wiped or unreadable. Windows gives up, but most of the file system may still be there.
Encryption. A BitLocker volume Windows doesn't recognize as BitLocker, or a drive taken out of a USB enclosure that encrypts in hardware (some WD and Seagate external drives do). In the second case the data is only readable through the original enclosure's board.
The drive is failing. On a hard drive, the file system structures sit on sectors the drive can no longer read. On an SSD, the firmware or its internal translation table can fail, often showing a wrong capacity or a strange model name. This is the case where software can make things worse, or simply can't help.
The important point: the first five are logical problems, and the data is usually fully intact. Only the last one is a hardware problem.
Windows reads a drive layer by layer. A RAW error means the chain broke somewhere above the file level, which is why your files themselves are often still intact.
My SSD shows as RAW. Is my data lost because of TRIM?
Probably not. On an SSD, a RAW drive is a blessing in disguise compared to, say, an accidental format. Both look the same to you: the drive suddenly seems empty. But a format makes Windows send TRIM for the whole volume, and the SSD erases everything within moments. A RAW volume isn't mounted, so no operating system sends TRIM to it, and the data stays where it is. That protection lasts exactly as long as you leave it RAW: the moment you click Format, you turn a recoverable situation into an unrecoverable one.
One exception: if the SSD itself is failing (its firmware or internal translation table), it can also show up as RAW. Then TRIM isn't the problem, but software won't help either. You can usually recognize this by a wrong capacity or a strange model name in Disk Management.
What should I not do?
Don't format. That's literally what Windows asks you to do, and it's the worst option. A quick format writes a new, empty file system over the start of the old one. A full format on Windows Vista and later overwrites the entire drive with zeros, and then the data is gone for good. On an SSD, even a quick format is fatal: Windows sends TRIM for the whole volume, and the SSD wipes everything within moments.
Don't run CHKDSK. On a RAW drive it usually refuses to run anyway. But if the file system is partly recognized, CHKDSK "repairs" it by discarding whatever doesn't add up, and that can be your files and folders. It's built to make a file system consistent again, not to save your data.
Don't click Initialize. If Windows asks to initialize the disk, that writes a new partition table.
Don't try partition repair tools unless you know exactly what you're doing. Tools like TestDisk write to the drive. In experienced hands they can be useful; used blindly, they can turn an easy recovery into a hard one.
Don't keep trying. Every reconnect, scan and repair attempt on a failing drive costs it part of its remaining life.
What should I do?
Check the capacity in Disk Management (Windows) or Disk Utility (Mac). If the drive shows its correct size, it's probably a logical problem. If it shows 0 bytes, a wrong or absurd size, or doesn't appear at all, the problem is deeper. Stop and post here.
Think about where the drive came from. Was it used on a Mac, in Linux, in an Android phone, or in an external enclosure you took it out of? Then it may not be damaged at all.
Check SMART with a tool like CrystalDiskInfo. Reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors mean the drive is degrading. Image it first, or get help.
Scan it with recovery software. Good tools can find a file system at the right offset, rebuild a damaged boot sector, and reconstruct the folder tree even when part of the MFT is gone. See our recommended data recovery software.
Check the preview before you pay. Open about 20 larger photos at full size. If those look right, the tool understood the file system, and most other files will be fine too.
Recover to a different drive. Never to the RAW drive itself.
When should I stop and get help?
The drive doesn't show its correct capacity.
It clicks, beeps, disconnects or reads extremely slowly.
It's a drive from an external enclosure that encrypts in hardware.
In those cases, post your situation here before you buy anything or try anything else.
I made an account just to post this, because I think it can help a lot of people.
My GH5 II fell during a 40 min interview, which cut the recording (FHD 25p, 4:2:2 10-bit ALL-I, 200 Mbps, LPCM). All I had left was a 61 GB .MDT that nothing would open.
A .MDT is Panasonic's temp file: the frames and audio are there, but the index (moov) only gets written when you hit stop.
What failed:
- LUMIX Repair Tool: S-series only.
- In-camera Video Repair: GH6 and later only.
- Untrunc: With the skip option, it kept throwing errors nonstop and was taking forever. It was clearly heading nowhere.
So I figured, nothing left to lose: what if I just asked Claude to rebuild the file itself?
What Claude did, running on my PC:
1. Read the .MDT read-only and confirmed it was full of real H.264 frames from start to end.
2. Learned the layout from a clip I'd shot afterwards with the same settings: blocks of 12 timecodes, 12 frames, then audio.
3. Tested its parser on that healthy clip first. It matched the real index byte for byte.
4. Walked the .MDT with that pattern and wrote a new moov.
Result: 40:29 recovered, picture and sound in sync, only ~3 frames lost at the drop. About 10 minutes passed between me asking Claude to "write it yourself" and the full 61 GB file being ready.
Takeaway: generic tools have to handle every camera and every format, so they can choke on a specific case like this one. That's where AI shines: a throwaway script built for one file, one camera, one setting, and tested on a clip where we knew the right answer.
I was shocked to see it work this well, I had to share it.
Hi guys, I was transferring some of my friends old terraria worlds/players using a usb drive and when I plugged it into the laptop windows said it was corrupted. Stupidly I didnt make a backup.
I've used photoreq and have recovered alot of the data but I can't seem to find any of the player data. They are meant to be stored as .plr files but currently all the data from the original terraria game folder seems to be split across multiple zip and text files. I know it's not the most important thing in the world but they were quite sentimental to him and I feel bad about losing them. Does anyone know where I should go from here to try and get his player files/ character data? it would be much appreciated!
Hey guys, I need some advice with a Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD from my sister’s PC.
It suddenly stopped working / isn’t being detected anymore. When I removed it, I noticed that part of the SSD looks slightly wet or oily. I’m not sure if it’s actual moisture or just residue from the M.2 thermal pad/heatsink.
The files on it are important, so I don’t want to make things worse. I haven’t tried heating/reflowing it yet.
Is there anything safe I can try to get it detected temporarily so I can clone/recover the data? And is there any way to tell if the controller or NAND is the problem?
I can send clear pictures of both sides of the SSD if that helps.
This is my family hard drive and it has every picture and memory it is quite old but i couldn't recover it in time so i need help the hardrive doesn't show in bios and it is still spining with sata cable so i need you guys help
The hard drive is ntfs i think
My os is linux distro debian
The harddrive GST Mobile 250gb
I recently bought a video guestbook phone off AliExpress and somehow lost al the files and folders on the internal storage when connecting it to my computer. Is there any way to get the right files for the storage to make the phone working again? The manual says i need a OGM file.
Im trying to recover an old email and im thinking that using my old device (my first phone) is maybe the best solution because maybe the support are gonna recognise the device. so i got my old phone but the problem is that i have a password that i no longer remember does someone know a way of bypassing it without using the factory reset mode?
Hello everyone, I accidentally deleted some files and only noticed today. I think they were deleted around a week and a half ago.
I tried checking the Btrfs subvolumes and available snapshots using btrfs subvolume list, and I also checked the Snapper configuration using snapper list-configs. I found that Snapper is configured only for the root filesystem, and the available snapshots are for the system, not /home. The backup I found also doesn't contain the /home files.
Is there any way or any tools that could help recover deleted files from Btrfs on an SSD?
I was installing Windows 11 on my old Dell laptop. It has an SSD and a 1TB HDD.
I accidentally selected a partition on Disk 1 (my HDD) and clicked Delete instead of selecting my SSD. The HDD had one large partition containing crucial data, and it now shows as Unallocated Space.
I did NOT click Next or install Windows on the HDD. I cancelled the installation and returned to the disk selection screen.
I haven't done anything else to the drive.
Questions:
Is my data still recoverable?
Should I try TestDisk or DMDE to restore the partition?
What's the safest way to recover the data without making things worse?
The data is very important, so I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks!
My Maxone 500 GB External Hard Drive (NTFS) (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07C812LHQ) is no longer accessible on any PC I try to connect it to. For reference I've tried it on a Windows 10 Desktop and Windows 11 laptop with similar results.
This started after I connected it to my Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 to see if I could transfer some files off of it, but my tablet defaulted to "Charging Connected Device via USB" and gave me no option to change this or eject the drive, so I unplugged it from the tablet. I think this was my first mistake.
Now, whenever I plug it into any PC (I've tried this on multiple computers already), I can hear the drive physically spinning up and see its light come on, but it does not appear in File Explorer and no program seems to be able to read it. Disk Manager seems to detect it as a JMICRON JMS579 USB Device and lists it as "Disk 2" but doesn't let me initialize it. The properties say it's working properly and I can access the list of events which says the "device was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match."
The drive appears in my system tray and Devices and Printers as USB Mass Storage (I know it's the drive because it disappears when I eject & unplug it and I have no other storage devices plugged in). I've run Diskpart on the command line, which shows Disk 2 in the list sometimes but not always, though I can select it and it tells me the disk is online. It doesn't let me initialize it or clear disk attributes though. When it appeared in the list, the storage was listed as 0B.
This is entirely new territory to me as I've never had a disk appear to still be functional but not be read by my computer at all. I suspect it has something to do with the USB bridge board or something similar failing but I don't know what exactly could have caused it? I need a disk working to make some crucial backups so I would really prefer not to have to shell out for a new one.
My iPhone 17 got bent and is completely bricked now, but when I plug it into my Mac finder recognizes it in recovery mode. I do not have an iCloud backup, and my data is not synced to iCloud, so the data is only on the device, and I'd really like to recover it. From the research I've done it seems the only solution is to take the phone to a third party store for microsoldering, but I'm not really familiar with this at all. Is data recovery realistically possible here? Also, I go to college in PA but am from NJ if anyone has recommendations for a place to go to
So I have a USB drive that I put a bunch of my photos on a couple years ago. It was a Mosdart like 64gb from amazon. Give or take on the size and it definitley wasn't full. I tried to use it a couple weeks ago to put more photos on to it and it was broke. Wouldn't show up on my computer anywhere when I plugged it in.
I sent it in to an online data recovery service that seemed pretty reliable. They originally quoted me about 200 to 300 dollars. They received the USB and now after examining it the new quote is about 1.2k to 1.5k. Holy shit. I cannot pay that much.
Do you guys have any recommendations for where I could get this done for any cheaper? They haven't told me what is wrong with the drive if they do know.
It has all my dogs puppy pictures on it and idk what I will do if I loose all those memories with her.
A couple of days ago, I spilled some water on my laptop and it stopped working. The fans still work and the lights still turn on, but that's it.
Now, I have got a new (Windows) laptop and an SSD enclosure. My old hard drive is an SN730 NVMe SSD, M.2 2280-S3-M. The enclosure is an USB-C M.2 NVMe.
When I connect the enclosure to my new laptop, I hear the sound and see a light on the enclosure. However, nothing shows up.
I then opened "create and format hard disk partitions". An "initialize disk" window popped up. I selected 'GPT' and clicked on 'OK'. However, I then get an immediate notification saying that it failed due to a "fatal device hardware error".
The person in the first video also did not have his drive showing up automatically, but he does not get the error when initialising. The person in the second video gets an error message like me, but the 'local disk' does show up in his explorer so he can just select it with the DMDE data recovery software. I seem to have both of their problems, so I can't do anything.
I'm really upset right now, there were a lot of files on my laptop that I was really attached to and I don't understand how a small spillage could have destroyed both my laptop and my hard drive :(
Is there anything at all I can still do? Either by myself or by contacting a data recovery firm?
SMART: none didn't take a snapshot when it was alive, but SAN didn't alert of anything critical.
FW: SC60
3 years old! just past warranty, sigh.
Please help.
I have no reason to suspect this is a mechanical failure. no clicks, no noise, nothing. I tried it a toaster external drive thing (not hooked into usb as I dont want it writing anything... it doesn't power up when inserted)
My MD1200 SAN does not detect it.
no continuity between left and right side of the e-fuses/current limit switches.
readings for 12v and 5v rails at SATA connector are:
5v - 10Ohms (steadily climbing)
12v - 900kOhms (static)
there was no surge or abrupt power failure, I did have a power outage, my old (but working!) APC Smart-UPS 1400XL took over. I powered down everything because I didn't know when power was coming back.
When I booted the SAN and servers, I saw degraded drive on the RAID, which is running in RAID-0 on and Perc H800.
anything else just let me know, can help provide other test points.
Thanks in advance!
edit: additional info!
Wired up a console TTL RX/TX cable and only get this one line of output:
bought a dvd** player in hopes that some of our old family videos would come up from our dvd, but for some reason some dvd would come up with the video contents and some would say to drag contents into the dvd (basically saying it’s empty). are these dvd still salvageable? i don’t wanna throw them out knowing that my family’s memories are still in there. these dvds haven’t been touched for probably almost 20 years now.
update: thank you everybody for the responses! i appreciate it a lot. i will check if the disc have been finalized on the camcorder, last time i checked tho that camcorder hasn’t been able to read the discs ive checked before.
I have a WD Blue where I noticed that some sectors are copying slowly (few Kb/s), and when checked smart, saw that the Disk is degraded, and wanted to save all Files. already got 86% backed up with opensuperclone, but now it seems its going nowhere (because of speed). Is there a recommended setting that I can change? I also read about a WD error, that makes some sectors slow, and wanted to ask if this is also applied here.
hi all. i just spent an hour sobbing after i got a call from Apple about my laptop. long story short, it wouldn’t power on at all so i took it to the genius bar. they called and said that the firmware revive failed and it would need a logic board replacement. I declined because i’m not spending $700+ on an “old” laptop just to not have my documents and memories (pictures, videos, etc.)
it’s a 2020 MacBook Pro, 13” with the M1 chip. is there any way to recover the data? is it something i can do at home or would you recommend a repair shop (pls nothing too expensive i’m an underpaid 23yo)?
I accidentally deleted some videos while clearing up space and then I hit delete instead of recover because I am smart.
Is it possible to recover them with no backup? I’ve mostly accepted my mistake but would like to know of any faustian bargains I can make before truly moving on.
1) I have questions regarding "bit rot" (file corruption and data loss).
I have a 2.5" Seagate HDD in a USB 3.0 enclosure. I connect it to my PC once a year, check its status using CrystalDiskInfo, then disconnect it and store it in a drawer for another year. To prevent bit rot (file corruption and data loss), is it necessary to perform a full surface scan annually—either using general software or a tool like DiskFresh?
2) I copied files onto this 2.5" HDD (in its USB 3.0 enclosure) in 2023. Is it possible that bit rot or data corruption has occurred by 2026, given that I have not run DiskFresh or any full surface scan?
3) Also, if a power outage occurs while a full surface scan or a DiskFresh operation is running—causing the PC to shut down—will this lead to data corruption or loss on the 2.5" HDD (in its USB 3.0 enclosure)?
Hi 👋 iv been with my partner for 7 years. We have 3 kids together. Anyway he has been acting strange for a while now. Especially with his phone. Then i found a small hidden camera in our bedroom. And it was connected to an app on his phone. Before i could properly go through his phone he deleted pretty much everything and even smashed the phone. Pretty much everything is gone except these privacyzone files that i cant read. Would anyone have any idea how to recover or look at these files?
Things to add the phone is a red magic air 10 nubia.
These are located in my files.
Dog got ahold of SD card that had wedding photos my fiancée took on them. We took the bottom part out and it is in tact, but there is a crack on both sides. Is it done for, or is there hope for recovery?