Fixed: EFI Partition is RAW in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

Error! EFI partition is RAW

"Hello, everyone. My computer recently stopped working and the Windows cannot boot any more since then. After trying a lot, I realized that my EFI partition is RAW instead of FAT32 as before. What worse is that my bootloader is on the EFI partition and now I am unable to access them or use them to boot Windows. What should I do to repair it?"

Overview of RAW EFI partition

What is EFI partition? If your computer is running on GPT, the EFI(extensive firmware interface) system partition will be automatically generated after installing your operating systems. The EFI partition is a partition where the boot loaders used by the firmware when booting the OS are stored. It works like a bridge to connect the Windows to hardware.

What does "EFI partition is RAW" mean? A RAW partition refers to a partition without recognizable file system (FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT), which means you will fail to access it, not to mention downloading or copying the files inside it. Generally, EFI partition boot volume presents as FAT32, therefore, the RAW EFI system partition cannot be recognized by Windows.

In one word, due to the critical importance of EFI in Windows normal performance, if the EFI partition is RAW instead of FAT32 or no EFI partition was found, the Windows will fail to boot.

Why do I have a RAW partition?

Different users suffer the error for various reasons, here, we have summarized the most possible factors that may result in such error:

No matter what factor influences your computer, the only consequence is that you can't access to the EFI partition, so that your Windows won't be bootable.

How to fix "EFI partition is raw" error?

Since the EFI partition plays an important role in booting Windows, fixing "EFI partition RAW"error is our top priority. So how to fix or repair it so that EFI partition can be turned from RAW to FAT32, making your Windows work normally as before. In the following contents, three step-by-step methods will be presented to you. Please read carefully and see which one fit your situations.

✍Attention: In the situation where you can't boot your PC or cannot access the system disk, either,  you can remove the system disk containing RAW EFI partition and connect it to another PC that can boot normally. The PC will treat this unbootable disk as a second hard drive and allow you to access it as a data disk.

Method 1: Check and fix EFI partition error

Now that you have encountered such error, you can check the error with Windows built-in tool first to see what sector is bad and whether you can fix it.

CHKDSK, short for check disk, is a command to check logical integrity of the file system. In Command Prompt, you can use it to confirm if the system or administrative information about files is valid. Now you can type the following instructions to see how it works.

Step 1: Press "Windows + S" and enter "cmd" in the search box to open Command Prompt.

Step 2: Type "chkdsk g: /f /r /x" (g refers to the RAW partition that needs to be fixed.) and press "Enter" to execute the command.

However, you will receive this message "CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives". For this case, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, a free partition manager, to check whether there is a bad sector in RAW partition.

Step 1: Install and open this software, choose the partition you want to check, right click it and select "Advanced"> "Check Partition". 

Step 2: Choose "Check whether there is bad sector on the partition". And click "OK" to continue.

Step 3: Choose "Quick check" and click "Start" button to check.

Note: Although AOMEI partition Assistant provides powerful function to check bad sector for your disk or partition, it can only find the bad sector but not fix it. There are various ways to repair bad sector like subdividing the bad sector into an independent unallocated space. But the safest way is to use professional repair tools which won't be presented in details here.

Method 2: Format the RAW partition and recreate the EFI partition

Since we have known EFI partition being RAW means it cannot be recognized by Windows, one solution is to format the RAW EFI partition to FAT32 to make it recognizable. And then you can create an EFI partition to make the OS bootable. The detailed steps are given as below:

1. Press "Windows + R" and input "cmd" to enter command prompt.

2. Run the commands below to shrink a partition to get unallocated space.

►Diskpart

►List disk

►Select disk X (X refers to the disk number of the disk that needs an EFI partition)

►List partition

►Select partition N (N means the partition number of the partition that needs to be shrunk)

►Shrink desired=500 (shrink the partition by 500MB)

3. Then you can create EFI partition using unallocated space with the command below:

►create partition EFI size=200

►format quick fs=fat32 label="System"

►create partition msr size = 128

4. After the EFI partition has been created successfully, use the commands below to install bootloader and other essential applications.

►bootrec /fixboot

►bcdboot c:\Windows /s b: /f all

5. Now, you will get EFI partition as before, check whether it shows as FAT32 and reboot your computer to see whether it runs normally. 

Method 3. Reinstall Windows OS

Windows OS reinstallation should be your last choice because this method will move your important files, settings, and applications, so please back up them in advance before you reinstall. After preparing a USB flash drive, you can follow the guide step by step:

Part 1: Create installation media

Step 1: Download Windows in the running computer, choose " Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) in the "Windows 10 Setup".

Step 2: Choose which media to use (USB flash drive or ISO file) and finish the remaining settings according to the prompts.

Part 2: Reinstall from the USB

Step 3: Till now, the boot media gets ready. Connect the bootable USB to your Windows, and restart your computer from it. Press "DEL" or "F2" to open boot menu, and enable USB boot.

Step 4: Finish the following setting, and click "Next".

Step 5: In the Setup window, click "Install now".

Step 6: In the "Activate Windows", enter your key or skip it by clicking "I don’t have a product key".

Step 7: In the new window, select "Custom: Install Windows only(advanced)".

Step 8: Select the drive you want to install Windows on, click "New" and then click "Next".

Step 9: Set necessary settings and wait patiently.

After this, your Windows can run and work normally, and you can see the RAW EFI partition is in FAT32 format now.

Conclusion

Keep calm when your Windows EFI partition is RAW next time, you can fix or repair the error as the three detailed methods described above. Compared with Windows built-in tools, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard perform more powerfully due to its easy and safe operations. If you upgrade to Professional edition, you can enjoy many useful functions: migrate OS to SSD, convert MBR to GPT, extend C drive, move folders from C drive to D drive, and so on.

Additionally, for sake of preventing EFI partition from becoming raw for some unknown reason in the future, you are suggested to clone EFI partition. Therefore, you can restore your computer to a good state as before.