External Disk Drive Suddenly Became RAW Unknown Kadath. UPDATED How To Fix External Disk Drive Suddenly Became RAWDISCLAIMER These examples use techniques that I actually employ in the real world to deal with real problems. They might be wrong or dangerous. They might be inefficient. If you try them yourself, it might cause damage or irreparable loss. I take no responsibility for anything you do based on my examples or the information that I provide here. How can you quickly fix and format your USB flash drives and make it functional again for optimal use. USB flash drives are a great data storage and safe d. Trying to get Linux Distros onto an older PC, sadly has no native USB boot support, was wanting to get a CD that could mount the USB and switch over to it, so a. It has been well over a year since last updating my post on Recovering an external hard drive that has suddenly become RAW and there have been some significant changes. Parted. Magic is no longer free. Hard drives larger than 5. GB have become commonplace. Test. Disk has become even better. Many many many comments from people have been posted that show common problems that are not directly addressed by the original post. So with all of that in mind, here is a revised version that hopefully addresses some of the shortomings of the post that was originally released in January of 2. A common and befuddling problem with computers is the sudden and seemingly inexplicable disappearance of an external hard drive that has been functioning properly. It can be a breathtaking experience to suddenly be told that your data, often irreplaceable pictures and documents, might be gone forever. As with many similar situations in life the appropriate response is Dont panic. When approached sensibly and carefully, the situation can be resolved and the data saved more times than not. Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' title='Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' />Here we will look at the causes, fixes and preventative measures for instances involving external drives being used with Windows XP and Windows Vista78. Error Messages. Common error messages associated with the sudden inability to access an external hard disk drive. When attempting to access the drive in Windows you may see a message asking you to format the drive DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVEYou need to format the disk in drive before you can use it. When your USB port stopped working, did you just plug your device into another one Well, you might need that port one day The fix could be easy, so lets give it a try. In this tutorial you can find instructions to resolve the You need to Format the Disk before you can use it error message, after improper USB unplug. WinAbility Software the home of Folder Guard, USBCrypt, AB Commander and other useful Windows utilities and security and encryption software. A Google employee familiar with the feature spoke to Lifehacker to clarify how corrections to the OneBox section affect search results. Feedback is ordered by. Do you want to format it Another error that you may see when trying to access the drive in Windows from a program or the command line isThis volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted. Attempting to run chkdsk in an attempt to repair the problem will give an error alsochkdsk can not be run on the drive. The type of the file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives. The Disk Management window shows the partition as either RAW or without a filesystem type. What does RAW partition mean. Honeywell Progeny Manual. A RAW filesystem simply means that it is a filesystem that is not recognized by Windows. Therefore all the available filesystem drivers are unable to mount the filesystem as a drive. RecoveryTheHideFiles.jpg' alt='Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' title='Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' />This often happens when the records determining the filesystem type or location on the disk are damaged or corrupted, usually the partition table or the boot sector. Since Windows sees no filesystem in the partition, it prompts you to format it in order to create a filesystem on it. DO NOT FORMAT IT. Free Download USB Hidden Folder Fix 1. Easytoconfigure and portable piece of software whose purpose is to help you view the hidden folders and. A communitybuilt site of hints and tips on using Apples new Mac OS X operating system. UPDATED How To Fix External Disk Drive Suddenly Became RAW. DISCLAIMER These examples use techniques that I actually employ in the real world to deal with real. Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' title='Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' />Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. Learn how and when to remove these template messages. Why does it happen and how to avoid it. The most common cause of external hard drives suddenly becoming RAW drives is if they are disconnected from a computer without using the Safely Remove Hardware option. This can happen in many ways such as a power failure, unplugging the drive from the USB port or from its AC adapter, a problem with the computer that causes it to temporarily disconnect the USB hubs and many more circumstances can lead to this occurring. Always use Safely remove hardware to disconnect the drive. Left click the icon on the taskbar, select the device from the menu, and wait for the confirmation message. How do you fix it. For this example, I chose the most heavily damaged disk with this issue that I could find in my collection of damaged disks. Amazon-MP3-store.png' alt='Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' title='Usb Hidden Folder Fix 1.1' />It has both of the most common problems. The partition table is corrupted and the boot sector of the main partition is also scrambled. The pictures of error messages above all came from this drive. The pictures of the repair process below are from the actual repair of this drive. Some images are from a virtual machine simply to make it easier to get the screenshots and some are from an actual desktop. This is a real repair not a manufactured example. Before proceeding beyond this point, you need to be aware of the risks involved. If the problem with the drive is not simply a logical error but is a manifestation of physical damage then the more you use it and try to repair, the worse the damage may become. To minimize the risks, the drive can be taken to a professional who is experienced in this type of repair. The drive should not be making strange clicking or beeping noises. That means that there is definitely physical damage and it should be sent to a facility with the proper tools and environment to repairrecover it since trying to repair it as described in this post can make that situation worse. If you wish to continue on your own there are three important rules to remember. Computer problems are variable. You may very well come up with a different situation than I outline below. Make sure that you stop and think things through carefully when the process becomes different than I describe. You DO NOT WANT TO WRITE ANYTHING TO THE RAW DRIVE except for the repaired MBR and repaired Boot Sector if necessary. Any other writing can overwrite data on the drive that you would want to keep. This repair does not apply to solid state drives SSD. They are very different than normal drives and can erase important data on a RAW partition just by connecting power to them. BEFORE PROCEEDING YOU MUST TRY TO DETERMINE IF THERE IS PHYSICAL DAMAGEIf there is physical damage, then consider sending the drive to a professional recovery service since physical damage often continues to degrade the data and simply powering on the drive may make data become irretrievable. Accessing and Assessing a Hard Drives S. M. A. R. T. Data to Determine if There is Physical Damage. Being able to effectively analyze the S. M. A. R. T. data on a hard disk drive HDD enables you to quickly identify problems that can aid you in recovering all of the data from it before it becomes irretrievable or requires significant expense to retrieve. S. M. A. R. T. stands for Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and is the hard drives record of its internal diagnostic monitoring and usage statistics packaged for being accessed externally. The primary purpose of S. M. A. R. T. is to alert us to an impending failure of the drive while there is still time to save the data. When a hard drive reports that the S. M. A. R. T. health is FAILED you must get the important data off of it immediately and not use the drive anymore. IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT DIFFERENT MANUFACTURERS AND DIFFERENT DRIVE MODELS CAN STORE AND DISPLAY DIFFERENT SUBSETS OF S. M. A. R. T. DATA AND CALCULATE VALUES AND TOLERANCES DIFFERENTLY. S. M. A. R. T. data is best used as a general guide. For specifics, the hard drives technical documentation must be consulted. Sometimes that information is difficult to come by and can be proprietary. For example, the formulas for how some manufacturers calculate normalized values for attributes can be very difficult to find. Wikipedia entry for S. M. A. R. T. Proper analysis of S. M. A. R. T. data. Can help determine if the problem is physical damage or just logical damage.