Why? File system corruption is often related to head alignment issues or firmware damage. However, running software on a damaged hard drive can greatly reduce the chances of a successful recovery. If the drive has failed due to a logical (non-physical) issue, disk health utilities or data recovery software may restore the missing files. Your data recovery partner will need extensive knowledge and appropriate outfitting - in other words, your local computer shop probably won’t have the necessary resources. For example, some drives may need an actuator head swap, while others may require firmware repair. The exact method of repair will vary depending on the scenario. If the drive has failed physically, it must be treated by professional data recovery technicians. When a hard drive or an HDD partition turns RAW, the data is usually still there you just can’t see it, since the device is missing its file system. Fixing a RAW Hard Drive and Recovering Data Of these scenarios, physical hard drive issues are the most common (and most likely, if the error occurred without interaction from the user). Corruption caused by software issues or an unsafe shutdown.Some of the scenarios that can cause a hard drive to read as RAW include: It’s impossible to say without a detailed evaluation (fortunately, provides free hard drive evaluations, and all of our services are supported by our no data, no charge guarantee - if we can’t recover your important files, you don’t pay for the attempt). So, why did your hard drive suddenly lose its file system? Data Loss Scenarios That Might Cause File System Damage Here’s the good news: In most circumstances, the data is still recoverable. Needless to say, if your hard drive reads as RAW, you won’t have access to your files. When you format a hard drive, you’re assigning it a file system - but if the file system becomes unreadable, there’s no process in place for data management. Think of the file system as a process for managing data. FAT (including FAT12, FAT16, and FAT 32).NTFS (commonly associated with Windows).Different operating systems support different file systems, but the most common include: The operating system cannot understand how the data is organized, so the drive is treated as unformatted.Ī file system is a structure used by an operating system to control how data is read and written. If your computer identifies a hard drive (or other data storage device) as RAW, that means that the file system has become unreadable.

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