When your external/USB/portable hard drive becomes RAW, you’ll be unable to access the files saved on it and use it for other purposes. To use it again, refer to this post to learn how to fix RAW hard drive to NTFS.
By Teresa / Last Updated January 18, 2020
“My 320GB WD external hard drive works properly, but I want to delete all partitions there and create a new big one. I connected it to my Windows 7 and it is recognized as usual. In Disk Management I deleted all existing partitions and it shows up as Unallocated. Then I right click the unallocated space to create a new simple volume. Initialized to MBR and I started to format the HDD with normal format (not Quick Format).
Nevertheless, it says it is formatting but there is no % process appear. Around four hours or so, it still shows no progress. I cancelled it by restarting my computer and the hard drive becomes RAW since then. Helpless! Any suggestions on how to fix RAW hard drive to NTFS or other formats that is readable under Windows will be appreciated.”
It is a post about external hard drive becomes RAW after unsuccessful formatting. Actually, the same problem also happens on portable hard drive, USB hard drive, flash drive and micro SD card, even internal hard drive sometimes. If you run CHKDSK /f on the RAW format drive, chances are that you’ll get this error message: CHKDSK cannot be run on the drive. The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives. Well, what is RAW format hard drive and why it emerges?
A RAW format hard drive refers to a drive has not been formatted to any readable file system such as NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, FAT, Ext2, Ext3, etc. Data on that drive cannot be readable because Windows does not know how to access. Say it plainly, that drive is corrupted or lost. The commonly seen symptoms would be: Disk not formatted, the parameter is incorrect, or Sector not found, even though the drive showing up as Local Drive and Healthy in Windows.
What caused RAW format problem? In fact, the answer depends. Generally speaking, following reasons may account for why hard drive switched from NTFS to RAW.
Format suspended. As described in the post at the beginning.
Unexpected system shutdown or meltdown. System error or hard disk error has the same bad effect.
Virus infection, which breaks file system directly.
Inappropriate computer behaviors like unplug the drive without rejecting.
Power failure. Suddenly power outage.
Surely, there are other possible reasons that can lead to hard drive partition corruption and change NTFS to RAW. However, it is more important to figure out how to convert RAW hard drive to NTFS or other file systems.
Note: Following methods will change RAW file system to NTFS by completely formatting it. If there are important files you need to recover, please turn to professional data recovery software and get data back first. Please remember to backup hard drive on a regular basis in the future.
There are many approaches to format a drive in Windows. But in some cases, you may encounter such errors when you format a RAW drive, “The format did not complete successfully” in Disk Management and “Windows was unable to complete the format” in File Explorer. If you run CHKDSK on that drive, you’ll get “CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives”. In that case, try these two recommended solutions to fix RAW external hard drive to NTFS.
You cannot directly format RAW drive by using format H: /FS: NTFS command because chances are that it may fail. Therefore, you need to do more changes before formatting.
1. Connect the external drive to Windows and make sure it can be detected. If it is a data partition on internal disk, skip this step.
2. Press Windows key and R key combination to open Run. Inputdiskpart and run as administer. Type following commands in sequence and each command has an Enter followed by.
list disk
select disk n (where n is the RAW hard drive)
online disk (if it is not online)
attributes disk clear readonly
clean
convert mbr (or “convert gpt” based on the disk capacity)
create partition primary
select part 1
active (if it is the boot drive)
format fs=ntfs label=new quick (you can replace new with another desired name)
list volume (you should be able to see a NTFS formatted partition)
exit
The RAW hard drive should be changed to NTFS successfully, and you can Change Drive Letter and Paths to assign drive letter in Device Manager as well as resize partition using Diskpart later if you want to. However, the formatting process takes too much time in a few cases. Or, it does not work for some RAW drives that caused by serious damage. Fortunately, a free and powerful formatting tool will be introduced for Windows 10, 8, 7, XP, and Vista.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is free hard drive partition manager that will help you fix external hard drive RAW format issue. Except for NTFS, you’re allowed to format RAW drive to FAT32, exFAT, Ext2 or Ext3 as well. Download it and refer to steps given below:
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Win 10/8.1/8/7/XP
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1. Connect RAW hard drive, install and launch the RAW drive formatting tool. At main interface, right click RAW drive (it will show up as Unformatted) and select Format Partition.
2. In the pop-up dialogue, choose NTFS file system and do other changes if you want to.
3. Confirm the operation by clicking on Apply and then Proceed.
Tips:
To format internal hard drive from RAW to NTFS, especially system installed drive, it is suggested to format it without booting Windows. You can create a WinPE bootable device and format disk there.
To avoid hard drive becomes RAW in the future, please install anti-virus software on your computer, and plug and unplug the device within proper steps.
Other than aforementioned methods to fix RAW drive to NTFS, some users tried to convert RAW to NTFS using CMD. They typed convert F: /fs:ntfs (where F: is the RAW drive) only to get the error: Convert is not available for RAW drives.
Frankly speaking, the convert command only applies to convert file system from FAT32 to NTFS in command prompt. As a result, you need a different command, format. The advanced version of AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, the Professional, supports format RAW drive to NTFS in Command Prompt. Upgrade to have a try.
1. Open Command Prompt and run as administrator as instructed. Type cd + the installation path of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and hit Enter. For example, input cd C: \Program Files (x86) \AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro Edition 6.6 and press Enter.
2. Type: partassist.exe /fmt: F /fs: ntfs /label: External and hit Enter. That means format partition F to NTFS and specify the partition label as External.
3. Click Yes at the User Account Control pop-up dialogue. And the formatting will be completed in a short while. Then, typeexit to leave CMD.
Description:
*/fmt: format; followed by partition number or drive letter.
*/fs: file system; can be followed by fat16, fat32, exfat, ntfs.
*/label: new partition label for the selected drive.
For more command line operations, please visit AOMEI Partition Assistant CMD.
Above solutions on how to fix RAW hard drive to NTFS actually point out how to format RAW hard drive to NTFS file system successfully. No matter Diskpart in Windows or the third party software AOMEI Partition Assistant, the purpose is to make RAW drive usable again. After performing hard drive formatting, you can move OS to new drive or copy partition to new disk to store data.
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