Any type of external storage drive becomes unreadable when it becomes RAW. This is a situation where you get certain error prompts when you try to access your drive. Window devices will immediately jump into action by trying to format the drive to make it available to you. However, formatting your drive will lead to the loss of the data on your drive. This solution might be best for situations where there is no data on the drive. More subtle solutions to solve this problem exist and you should know about them. The different available solution for converting your RAW external storage device to NTFS file system is quite straightforward. To convert RAW to NTFS, this article highlights some of the ways with which this conversion becomes achievable.
RAW to NTFS File System Conversion
Using the techniques to convert your RAW drive to NTFS will save you precious data and avoid unnecessary data loss. In a scenario where you do not have any data on your storage device, you can proceed to format your disk. However, it is always advisable to use any of the options below to fix your disk before formatting. Here are your options.
Option 1: iBoysoft Data Recovery Software
This option attempts to perform partition recovery on your disk. The corruption of the partition table and volume boot sector results in Windows’s inability to read your disk and reports it as the RAW file system. Using a partition recovery strategy is the right strategy to use.
Using iBoysoft Data Recovery for Windows, you can fix the RAW partition to NTFS file system easily. To proceed with this option, follow the stepwise recommendation below.
Step 1: Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Windows on your computer.
Step 2: Launch iBoysoft Windows recovery software and select the ‘RAW Drive Recovery‘ option.
Step 3: Insert the drive you want to fix and select the RAW drive from the iBoysoft data recovery software interface.
Step 4: Click the ‘Next‘ button to proceed with scanning the data from the RAW disk.
Step 5: Preview the files listed in the scanning result and proceed to check them.
Step 6: Select ‘Fix Drive’ to convert RAW file system to NTFS file system.
Note: If your original drive is an NTFS-formatted drive that becomes RAW for some reason, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Windows can help you fix RAW to NTFS. If your FAT-formatted drive becomes RAW, this software can only fix RAW to FAT.
Option 2: Convert RAW to NTFS by Reformatting
With this option, you have two methods of reformatting your RAW drive back to NTFS file system on your computer.
Method 1: Convert RAW to NTFS using Windows explorer
You can convert your RAW drive to NTFS file system using Windows Explorer in a few steps. To begin this reformatting process, right-click on your RAW drive option in your Disk Management menu. Proceed to select the ‘Format’ option from the menu dropdown after right-clicking. Next, select the ‘NTFS’ file system and fill in the other format information when you get the prompts. Proceed to select ‘Start’ to initialize the formatting process.
In most cases, this process is successful. In some rare cases, you might get an error message. For these rare cases, proceed to try using the second method to reformat your drive.
Method 2: Convert RAW to NTFS using the Diskpart command
Another available method to convert RAW drives to NTFS is using the Diskpart command. This option uses the command line option to process the conversion. To proceed, search for diskpart in your windows taskbar. Next, right-click on the ‘diskpart.exe’ option and proceed to choose the ‘Run as Administrator’ option.
Now in the diskpart prompt, input the command ‘list disk’ and press the Enter key. Enter ‘select disk X‘ command to select your disk. X is your disk number to identify your RAW storage drive. Enter ‘list volume’ command and press the Enter key. Enter ‘select volume X’ and press the Enter button. Here, X stands for your RAW partition volume number.
The next step is to enter ‘format fs=ntfs label=volume label quick’ and press Enter to proceed with the reformatting. You should get a message from diskpart showing ‘Diskpart successfully formatted the volume’ on completion.
Option 3: Convert RAW Drive to NTFS Using CMD
Chkdsk is a useful tool for Windows to check file system errors existing on a storage device. To proceed with this solution, enter ‘cmd’ in the search box, right-click on the ‘cmd.exe’ option, and then click ‘Run as Administrator’. After the Command Prompt window pops up, input ‘chkdsk driveletter: /f’, and then press the Enter button.
After the steps, Chkdsk will analyze the file system errors and fix them. Once the errors are repaired, your drive can be accessed again. This method is not always successful. Sometimes, you will get a message showing that the type of the file system is RAW, chkdsk is not available for RAW drives. At this time, you need to try other solutions.
Final Thought
All the methods mentioned in this article can be useful and offer you help. If your drive becomes RAW because of bad sectors, corrupted file systems, partition table corruption, virus infection, and insecure ejection, try one of the solutions to fix RAW drive issues. However, if your RAW drive is severely damaged, suffers from hardware issues, and data loss is not your concern, asking a local specialist for help or changing a new one is a good choice.
