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RAW External Hard Disk Drive

Have your external hard disk drive ever turned to raw? Raw is one kind of file system, which means unformatted. All information saved on it is inaccessible if the external hard disk drive shows raw problem. And system will prompt you to format the external hard disk drive before you can use it. The file system of that disk is not raw and could be used again. But files on it have been lost. What you need to do is to retrieve that data from the raw external hard disk drive.

Case of external hard disk drive turning to raw

My Seagate external hard disk drive showed raw file system the other day when I checked its disk properties. I did not know what does that mean and tried to open the disk to view its files, but I could not open it after a little try. What’s going on? The external hard disk drive is not usable till now. I know it could be usable after being formatted, but I do not want to lose contents saved on it which lead me do not format it. is there any possible way for me to get those files back?  -Alva from Utah

How to get files back from the external hard disk drive not formatted with data recovery software

Those files saved on the external hard disk drive which turns to raw could be retrieved. What we need is the data recovery tool. It could help us get files what we need back from the external hard disk drive not formatted quickly and safely. Here are its steps to restore the lost information as follows:

Recover data from external hard disk

Preparation: Download and install data recovery software on your computer. Then, connect the external hard disk to the computer and run the software. Finally, you can select a proper recovery module.

1Download and install the data recovery software on the computer.
2Connect the raw external hard disk drive to the computer on which the data recovery tool saved.
3Open the data restoration tool and then choose the recovery model and target disk to scan.
4Preview the contents in the list after the scan and pick up the files needed to recover

Reason that external hard disk drive become raw

The external hard disk drive will not turn to raw without any reason. The external hard disk drive may need to be formatted before we can use it due to some factors. It seems that the raw external hard disk drive is inevitable for most people. But as a matter of fact, we can avoid some unformatted external hard disk drive situation if we got why it turn to raw. Here are some common reasons as follows:

1. Virus attacks. If there is software or other files which contain virus and worms saved on the external hard disk drive or the computer to which the external hard disk drive connected include harmful and suspicious files, the external hard disk drive may be infected by virus and worms quickly. One of the consequences of virus infection is that the whole external hard disk drive turn to raw and can not be used.

2. File system corrupted. Raw file system is one kind of file system which not be formatted. And the normal file systems mainly are FAT series and NTFS. The file system such as FAT32 and NTFS may be corrupted because of some irresistible matters. Fortunately those files could be retrieved from the problematic external hard disk drive.

3. System error. The computer operating system may go wrong sometimes when we use the computer to surf on the internet or watch movies. If the external hard disk drive happens to insert to the computer when there are some problems about the operating system or system corrupted, then the external hard disk drive may become raw and can not be used normally.

4. Other related reasons that cause the external hard disk drive become raw error.

Other storage devices that may become unformatted

We have known that the external hard disk drive may turn to raw due to some reasons and files and folders saved on it could be retrieved by the data recovery program. Some people also have other kind of storage devices such as SD card, so they wonder that what if those flash memories become raw and need to be formatted. Actually, files saved on those storage devices also could be restored under the help of data recovery tool if they encounter unformat problem. For example, pen drive, Smart Media(SM), Compact Flash (CF), Multi Media Card (MMC), Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, XD-Picture Card (XD), and so forth.

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