DO NOT click ‘ Format’ if such prompt message appears (see screenshot below). IMPORTANT NOTE: Windows may prompt to format the RAW drive. Otherwise, you will end up losing all the data permanently. If there’s no backup, consider fixing the corruption with Windows proprietary tools and utilities. Thus, before you convert RAW format hard drive to NTFS, make sure you have the required data backup available. To convert a RAW format hard drive to NTFS, just format the hard drive by using the Disk Management tool.įormatting permanently erases all the data contained in the affected RAW drive. However, if the drive was accessible earlier and now it isn’t, it most probably is corrupt. Therefore, a RAW format drive doesn’t necessarily mean that the drive is damaged or corrupt. can lead to file system errors, which can turn a healthy drive or partition into a RAW partition. Malware & virus infection, corrupt files, system crash, abrupt shutdown, removing drive without ejecting, etc. Also, a hard drive without any file system or damaged file system is also detected as a RAW drive by the Windows OS. Any storage media with a file system other than the supported ones are not accessible and recognized as RAW format drive in Windows (see screenshot). Windows supports NTFS, FAT (FAT12/FAT16/FAT32), Live File System, REFS, and exFAT file systems.
