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I have a 30gb USB drive which I have some important data in. When I plug it in the computer, Windows 10 v 1909 for x64, it displays "You need to format the USB drive before you can use it". I press cancel because I don't want to lose the data in the file. It then displays "F:\ is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognized file system. ......"

I check the drive in disk management, and the drive appears to be in RAW, healthy (Active, Primary Partition).

I then tried using the command in terminal "chkdsk f: /r", but it didn't work and returned the message "the type of file system is RAW. The type of the file system is raw. chkdsk is not available for raw drives"

I have been looking online to see how I can fix this, but they all seem to be advertising third party software, which looks very shady (trojan horse kind of things .

As a last resort I am reaching out to the StackOverflow community for some help.

Dave M
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lerner143
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    You're probably down to file scavenger software such as testdisk, photorec etc, or a data recovery company. Golden rule for the future: Never store the only copy of any data on a USB stick/SD card. They fail with frightening totality at the slightest provocation. – Tetsujin Apr 12 '21 at 08:24

2 Answers2

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I would not do anything to that drive except clone it to a raw image and then work exclusively on the image...

Anything you do to the drive except read from it may destroy/overwrite your data...

svin83
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There are a few answers on the forum on this topic in other posts. RAW just means the OS cannot read from the disk.

But here are my ten cents that I tried. This is risky if you have no backups, altering volume information may damage what is on the drive. Check disk is still the best bet.

I converted a VHDX to VHDK and the data disk was offline. Bringing it online mounted the drive to a letter but was a RAW partition.

You do not need 3rd party tools, just good old CMD.

  1. Check Disk may work if you use the force parameters:

CHKDSK F: /f/r/x

Or simply a reboot for Windows to run it itself. (if the drive is mapped to a letter)

I did find a cool post on WindowsClub for using Disk Part:

  1. Open the Command Prompt as an Administrator.
  2. Type diskpart and hit Enter to open the Diskpart utility.
  3. Type list disk and hit Enter to see all the connected drives.
  4. Here, identify the RAW drive and note it’s associated disk number.
  5. Now type these commands one-by one and hit Enter.

select disk A (Replace "A" with the disk number of the RAW drive)

attributes disk clear readonly

attributes disk clear offline

attributes disk clear hidden

attributes disk clear noerr

recover partition table

exit

Another post suggested to Shrink the drive so all attributes get realigned.

Jacobus Burger
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    Shrink the drive is total non-sense. You can only shrink filesystems. And because it is detected as RAW Windows can't see any. For the same reason chkdsk even with /f won't do anything either. The diskpart steps are very good though. It is worth a try, even though the chance of success is slim. – Tonny Aug 18 '23 at 08:10
  • I would not call it out as "total nonsense", realigning the volume can fix the issue. It may though only be applicable to disks and not a removable drive? This is explained on Microsoft site and on another forum. I will add the links in my initial response. – Jacobus Burger Aug 18 '23 at 09:35
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    This entire answer is *total* nonsense. Assuming people want the data from the RAW partition, chkdsk, well basically anything that tries to fix in-place is a bad idea. If data is of no concern just reformat the partition/drive. – Joep van Steen Aug 18 '23 at 09:46
  • I agree, if you do not care for your data, wipe the disk. But my methods did work in gaining access to the volume. You are too harsh in calling my comments nonsense. The methods work as an alternative to 3rd party solutions. Great to see this is an uplifting community. – Jacobus Burger Aug 24 '23 at 11:07