# Hard Drive filesystem changed to RAW



## Zill

There's really not much to explain here.
I woke up this morning and couldn't open my D drive, which holds most if not all of my most important data, and could swear I lost all my files. I ran EasyRecovery and ALL my files were found, which is a relief, but here's the thing ... I don't have the space to recover these files onto another drive, but I can't access the D drive directly because it's ... well, inaccessible.

The filesystem also changed to RAW somehow, and I figured that might be a part of the problem. The drive's properties in device manager & explorer says the drive is working fine, I just can't access it.

Is it possible to make this drive operable again? Like, maybe I should do chkdsk /r? Someone in another thread said not to do chkdsk /f if it's RAW, because it'd ruin the data on the drive or something.
If not, is there a HD cloning software I can use to bring all my files from the inoperable D into a new drive with file & folder layout intact?

Thanks!


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## Jedi_Master

Zill said:


> There's really not much to explain here.
> I woke up this morning and couldn't open my D drive, which holds most if not all of my most important data, and could swear I lost all my files. I ran EasyRecovery and ALL my files were found, which is a relief, but here's the thing ... I don't have the space to recover these files onto another drive, but I can't access the D drive directly because it's inaccessible.
> 
> The filesystem also changed to RAW somehow, and I figured that might be a part of the problem. The drive's properties in device manager & explorer says the drive is working fine, I just can't access it.
> 
> Is it possible to make this drive operable again?
> If not, is there a HD cloning software I can use to bring all my files from the inoperable D into a new drive with file & folder layout intact?
> 
> Thanks!


Howdy Zill...

Hmmmm...

Honestly Zill, if it were mine I'd copy as much of the data over, and then burn it to cd, delete it and then copy more over...etc, continue the process untill all my data is recovered...

Then I'd open a command prompt ( Start - Run type in *cmd* hit enter) and type in *chkdsk d: /f /r* and see if it will repair the file structure...

The problem here is, as I see it, is that the drive has a corrupt File Allocation Table, chkdsk can repair it, but sometimes it can't, and if it can't you can loose data, which is why I suggested that you recover what data you can and burn it to CD...


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## Zill

Jedi_Master said:


> Howdy Zill...
> 
> Hmmmm...
> 
> Honestly Zill, if it were mine I'd copy as much of the data over, and then burn it to cd, delete it and then copy more over...etc, continue the process untill all my data is recovered...
> 
> Then I'd open a command prompt ( Start - Run type in *cmd* hit enter) and type in *chkdsk d: /f /r* and see if it will repair the file structure...
> 
> The problem here is, as I see it, is that the drive has a corrupt File Allocation Table, chkdsk can repair it, but sometimes it can't, and if it can't you can loose data, which is why I suggested that you recover what data you can and burn it to CD...


Ahhh, yeah, I see what you mean.
I guess I might have to do that. Better to be safe than sorry.
I'll start burning some stuff off the drive now, then when I've got all the important stuff burned, I'll try to recover it with chkdsk and hope for the best.


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## Zill

Well, I got everything dragged and safe onto my external and I went and did a chkdsk /f /r command, which took a few hours to finish, but when it finished I was still unable to explore the drive. It has a different error message when I browse D:\ now, though ...
"_D:\ is not accessible.
The wrong diskette is in the drive.
Insert (Volume Serial Number: ) into drive D:\_"
The drive is also still in the RAW format. Before chkdsk, the error was something along the lines of "_The drive is corrupt or inaccessible._"
I tried rebooting after the check, to no avail, then I tried doing multiple more chkdsks and multiple more restarts, still no dice. Any ideas?


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## mattyc

Try using TestDisk to recover the old partition structure.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


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## Zill

mattyc said:


> Try using TestDisk to recover the old partition structure.
> 
> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


I analyzed it, it came out saying the drive was okay. Searched deeper, still came out okay. Tried "_write partition structure_", it said to restart. Restarted, nothing changed ;(

Is there something else I'm supposed to do in it? I've never used it before.


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## Zill

I decided to try and format it, considering I had nothing to lose that I haven't copied over, and the drive is working perfectly now 
Now I can just drag all my stuff over and resume usage!
Thanks for your help, everyone!


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## bmc00962

I have the solutions for this problem:
You can download this software : zero assumpssion the latest version is 8.3 i tried it in HD 250GB Wetern Degital with NTFS File System and it restored all my Data .the link is : http://www.z-a-recovery.com/


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