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Raw HDD.

July 12th, 2020, 13:32

Hello,
An external A-DATA HDD became Raw and windows ask to format it. Linux in sometimes can open this kind of HDD, I want to know how can I fix it in Windows OS without format it? Any Linux or Windows tools that can fix it for Windows OS?

Thank you.

Re: Raw HDD.

July 15th, 2020, 19:47

I had a similar issue and managed to fix it "in place" (after doing a complete recovery with R-Studio, as a safety measure), but it involved some in-depth tweaking, no automated program could do anything in that particular situation.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36969
https://superuser.com/questions/1332970 ... o-fix-them

But there are no two logical issues exactly alike, what worked then might not help at all with your problem.

You could try to open the partition with DMDE and post some screenshots (especially if you see error warnings in red).

Also, just in case, check the drive's SMART status. You should already have a backup if the data is worth anything, but if there's any SMART defect, and you don't have a recent backup, you should be prepared to clone/image the whole drive ASAP, or at least extract non backed-up folders with a good recovery software (if R-Studio can't access the partition then you've got a serious problem – normally it shouldn't be necessary to perform a complete scan, the partition should be listed right away, even if it doesn't have a drive letter, clicking on "Open drive files" should be enough to list the currently allocated files/folders unless the MFT is corrupted).

Re: Raw HDD.

July 16th, 2020, 7:46

'RAW' is just a catch all for many possible situations, some which you can fix, many that you can't. It basically means Windows is unable to determine the file system. The WHY is what determines if it can be repaired in-place or not. So without additional info and diagnostics this question on how to fix this is nonsense.

Re: Raw HDD.

August 13th, 2020, 3:15

I would hexscan it for the sector that starts out .R.NTFS
Multiply that sector number by 512 and then mount it on a
Linux box. If the .R.NTFS sector were 63 then

mount -o loop,ro,offset=32256 /baddrive /mnt

then ls /mnt to see what's there

A number of disc errors could give you that symptom.
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