hi all i have a wd 500gb harddrive, to cut a long story short the system file has turned to RAW, Can this system file be formatted to NTFS or FAT32? And if so How?.

i have tried to format it with no sucess.

Filesystems don't change to "Raw" on their own - something happens to make Windows report that; either FS corruption or a hard disk fault of some kind. The fact that you say that you can't format the FS again tells us that it's the latter.

Do you have any data on that disk that you want retrieving, or any personal data that would be bad for others to see (bank details etc.)?

I was unable to open some files on the hardisk, so i copied what files i could onto another hardisk, i know what you mean about sensetitive data on the a harddrive, but no it was all mp3 and videos on that disk. thanks anyway but i dont need to recover any other files from this disk.

just wanted to know if i can still use this raw system disk. before i throw it out, or sell it on ebay

You would need to give more details about exactly what error message you see (and what gets logged in the system event log on Windows) when you try to format that hard disk, if you want any attempt at a diagnosis of whether it might be possible to do anything to ressurect that hard disk.

Since you don't want the data from the disk, IMHO, it is unlikely to be worth your time/money to try to fix - although cleaning the contacts between the HDA & PCB with IPA or a very soft pencil rubber costs nothing, and if you're going to junk the disk anyway, then you have little to lose (depending on your skillset & availability of the tools needed to remove the PCB, and I'd recommend using ESD precautions when doing this).

WOW, dont ask me how but the disk is formatted to exFAT file system, i am able to write file to the disk, but not sure of the full benefits of this file system. the origanll file system was fat32. i am not sure what to do now, wether to try format it again to fat32 or ntfs. what do u think i should do from here?

It's your disk, so you should know how it got into that new state! Apparently you've been doing something since your last posting, in order to get to that state - but you're not explaining in detail what you're doing, what changes have been made or actions performed, and you chose not to answer the questions in the 1st paragraph of my prevous reply


It's up to you whether you want to trust your data to a disk which you've already had problems with.

update: hi i have been able to format the disk to fat32, but the disk sometimes it crashes my pc, i have been able to take out the disk from the enclosure and connect it to the pc direct to sata. the model number of the hdd is wd500aajs. sometimes i can write files to the disk then sometimes i cant, sometimes i get a error saying 0x8007045D i/o error, i cannot format it to ntfs.

when i booted up my pc a warning came up saying that to backup up file from that disk and that the disk crash could happen. i have got the dianostics tool from western digital website and accessed the s.m.a.r.t. info PICTURE BELOW. i am currently runng a full scan of the hdd and will update as soon as its finished.

From what i have seen the disk is done! i my be wrong perhaps you could tell me if thats the case?

Thanks for the update. You've confirmed what I said before - the disk is definitely faulty - with little chance that there is anything you can try to improve the situation (other than the contact cleaning I explained before, which is unlikely to improve matters, and couldn't reset the incremented SMART counters anyway).


I doubt that the warning message used the word "crash" but a BIOS message warning you of likely impending drive failure is because of the SMART failure, which is confirmed by the output in your picture.


Although that software is showing "cooked" rather than "raw" values, 2 of the pre-fail SMART parameters have dropped down to, or below, their thresholds (they are the ones marked with the red crosses). I won't waste time on hypotheses as to what the problem might be, although one problem could certainly cause both parameters to behave in this way.

It is almost certain that the drive is beyond economic repair - so unless you needed data from it (which you've explained you don't), then we're done here! Have fun

Ok, thanks for your help VULCAN

You're welcome - glad you didn't have anything vital stored on it!