3 Solutions for USB RAW File System Repair

Help! My USB flash drive is changed into RAW!

“Several months ago, I bought a Patriot USB flash drive to store photos and videos of my family. It works great all the time. But, yesterday, when I inserted it into my computer as usual, the Windows 11 only showed an error message “disk is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?”. It was somehow in RAW file system and I can't access any files on it. What happened and why? Any feasible USB RAW file system repair solutions? I don’t want to lose any precious photos and videos. Thanks!”

Possible causes for USB RAW file system

The RAW file system is not a standard file system. It cannot be recognized by Windows 11/10 operating systems like FAT file system and NTFS file system. No matter whether the memory card, computer hard drive, or other USB drives show RAW file system, you will be unable to access the data inside. As for the possible causes, apart from the virus/malware attack, power outage, and unplugging USB without selecting the "safely remove hardware and eject media" option, you should also consider the following factors:

1. Bad Sectors

If the key area of the hard drive contains some bad sectors, the hard drive won’t work normally and probably becomes a RAW file system.

2. Partition Table Corruption

If the partition table of the drive is corrupted, the hard drive may also become a raw drive.

3. File System Structural Damage

If the file system suffers structural damage, the hard disk partition may change to raw format.

3 Solutions to USB RAW file system repair in Windows PC

Now comes the most important part: how to repair USB RAW file system in Windows 11/10/8/7? Below are 3 effective solutions you can try. However, in order to repair RAW USB without losing data, you had better recover the data from the raw USB first and back it up to another location. 

Solution 1. Check disk error on the RAW USB drive

When it comes to checking whether there are some bad sectors on the raw USB drive, running CHKDSK probably is the first thing that comes into your mind. But it is, in my experience, unreliable sometimes. For example, you might meet an error message: The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

Therefore, here we recommend a free partition manager for this task: AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It can help you to check disk errors in a few clicks instead of running complex commands. Windows 11/7/8/8.1/10/XP/Vista are supported. Next is how to check bad sectors on the hard disk via this software in Windows 11/10.

Step 1. Download the freeware, install and run it to enter its main interface. Click “Test” in the top toolbar, and choose “Disk Surface Test”.

Step 2. Tick on Quick Check and then Start.

Solution 2. Repair damaged partition table

A partition table is a table maintained on disk by the OS describing the partitions on that disk. This term is most associated with the MBR partition table. If the MBR partition table is damaged or corrupt, then the hard drive might become RAW and the system will be unable to locate the partition to boot from and the boot process will be halted. To repair the corrupted partition table, especially the MBR partition table, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can also help.

Step 1. Launch the freeware. Right-click the RAW USB to select Rebuild MBR.

Step 2. Choose the proper type of MBR for your current operating system and click OK.

Step 3. Click Apply->Proceed to begin rebuilding the master boot record.

Solution 3. Format the RAW USB to NTFS, FAT32, exFAT file system

If the above methods do not make any difference, formatting it to a regular file system, like NTFS, FAT 32 or exFAT is a guaranteed USB RAW file system repair solution. More importantly, you can also use AOMEI Partition Assistant for this task.

Step 1. Open AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click the raw USB drive and select Format Partition from the menu.

Step 2. Choose NTFS from the File System tab and click OK.

Step 3. Click Apply to execute the pending operation.

As you can see, AOMEI Partition Assistant is a powerful software and provides several USB RAW file system repair ways, and each one is easy to understand and follow, even for computer newbies. Besides, if you upgrade it to AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro version to unlock more amazing features like recovering deleted partitions on USB/SSD/HDD, migrating only OS drive to SSD, and allocating free space from one partition and you can use this tool to recover your lost data after formatting.

Tips for avoiding hard disk to become RAW format

Last but not least, we have prepared some tips you can take a look at to avoid hard disk RAW issues in the future.

▂Don’t remove your disk from computers in an improper way. Always remember to choose the “safely remove hardware and eject media” option.

▂Better to make a disk backup, which could help you recover the data easily when the disk suddenly turns raw and then you can format it without any worries.

▂Never format too much of your hard disk.

FAQs

How to convert USB RAW to NTFS?

Find the "This PC" or "My Computer" icon on your desktop. Then right-click on the icon, select "Manage" from the drop-down menu, then go to "Disk Management." Find your RAW storage device (such as an SD memory card, hard disk, or USB flash drive) from the gallery. Group shown Then right-click on the device. Select the option to format and select the NTFS file system.

How do I fix corrupted file system as raw in USB?

Repairing a damaged file system on a USB drive when it is displayed as RAW can be a little tricky. But you can try the above three methods we displayed before to repair it.

Can RAW files be recovered?

If you need to recover a raw disk partition, you should use a data recovery tool that can scan and extract data from the disk without relying on the file system. There are many options available online, here we recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Conclusion

In summary, encountering a RAW file system on your USB flash drive can be annoying, but it's not always an unsolvable problem. Luckily, there are three effective solutions to USB RAW file system repair on Windows PCs. Using a tool like AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can help simplify these processes. In addition, AOMEI software can fix other issues on USB drives such as USB gets slow, USB device not showing up in Disk Management, can't format USB, and so on.