Figure out why my WD external hard drive shows as RAW and get efficient ways to solve this issue. You can also get relevant RAW data recovery tips and data loss prevention tips.
Hello! I have a Western Digital 2TB My Book that is USB3. It is showing up as RAW in Disk Management. Windows Vista tells me to format this drive. But it’s impossible because I don’t want to erase the data. I believe My Book needs RAW data recovery or recognition for the partition. Thank you for your help.
- A user from Community. WD.com
As a portable storage device, external hard drives provide additional storage capabilities for backup files and data transmission. But some users are bothered by how do I fix my external hard drive suddenly became RAW.
You can find your RAW WD external hard drive via File Explorer or Disk Management, but you cannot access the data saved on it. All in all, when your WD external hard drive shows as RAW, which means this external HDD has not been formatted with any file system. Besides, unrecognized and damaged file systems also are responsible for RAW drives.
After double-clicking your RAW drive in File Explorer, you’ll automatically receive an error message as follows.
You need to format the disk in drive H: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?
Please don’t format your RAW disk if it saves your needed data because disk formatting aims to erase all the existing data on your RAW drive and make it ready for further use.
You’d better put the following suggestions into practice for a higher RAW data recovery rate.
When it comes to recovering deleted & missing files from your RAW WD external hard drive, seeking help from a professional Windows data recovery tool could be your top choice because a powerful third-party tool can avoid many blind spots and recover your data as much as possible.
Supported by AOMEI Tech, highly-praised MyRecover might meet all your needs.
These steps depict how to recover deleted files from external hard drives via this utility!
Step 1. Connect the WD external hard drive to your Windows computer. After running MyRecover, hover the mouse over your WD external hard drive and click Scan.
Step 2. It will automatically scan your WD external hard drive and display all the found files. Filter and preview your needed data according to Document Type (eg: Word documents).
Step 3. Go to the Other Missing Files folder and select the data you want. Then click “Recover x files” to begin the RAW data recovery process.
Notes:
WD external hard drive showing as RAW format! Assuming you’ve retrieved files from your WD external hard drive, you can fix your RAW drives via the following solutions.
If the file system of your external hard drive is not compatible with your Windows OS, you can convert the original file system to NTFS or FAT32 according to your situation.
In this case, you can take advantage of Disk Management because this Windows system utility is designed to perform advanced Windows storage tasks.
Step 1. After connecting your WD external hard drive, press “Win + X” and click “Disk Management” to open this tool.
Step 2. Locate your RAW disk and right-click on it. Then select the “Format” option.
Step 3. Select “NTFS” or “FAT32” as you prefer. Please remember to click “OK” to save these changes.
Sometimes, the damaged partition table also be blamed for RAW disks. If it happens to be your case, you can ask for help from this free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to rebuild your partition table.
Step 1. After running AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard on your Windows PC, right-click on the selected RAW drive and click the “Rebuild MBR” button.
Step 2. Select your current operating system and click the “OK” button.
Step 3. On the main interface, click Apply > Proceed.
If your WD external hard drive shows as RAW, please get possible reasons and feasible fixes from the above part. In addition, there’re some related and pertinent tips for you.
Similarly, you’re also supposed to recover data from RAW USB drives with MyRecover or other USB data recovery software first. Then you’re ready to fix it.
How to fix unallocated external hard drives without losing data? Please try to update or reinstall your external hard drive device driver, create a new simple volume, or extend volumes to add the unallocated space to fix it.
Avoid high temperatures or humid environments such as sunlight or water. Gently eject your external hard drive rather than drag it out. Avoid interruption when your external HDD is reading, writing, or transferring data. Make a good habit of creating regular file, partition, disk, or system backups using free backup software for Windows, AOMEI Backupper. Please think twice before deletion.