Fixed - Backup Drive appear as RAW

by CM Lim
May 26, 2018

BACKUP DRIVE STOP WORKING, WHY?

On the 1st of May 2018 (Labour day ), my backup drive (USB 2TB external) decided not to be recognized by my desktop PC for no apparent reason, not dead but just refused to show its content or existence no matter how many times I try reconnecting it. In the Windows Disk Management screen, all known storage were shown as "NTFS" format, the malfunctioned backup drive was shown as "RAW" - thanks for the holiday surprise.

SEARCH FOR SILVER BULLET

What followed were frenzied search on the net for solution and easily anyone can google a few pages of people in the same plight or a slew of websites providing recovery solution pertaining to sudden failure of this nature, I didn't know it is such a commonplace. From here one can realize how much faith to really put into any of these flash memory drive or HDD for backup, including the much touted SSD. The verdict is, no one can assure the durability much less the reliability of these drive, only the paranoid survive, have a backup of the backup.

WHAT CAUSED THE FLIP TO RAW

Until than, I was quite sure the damage was on "File table", what ever they call it, it is a directory on the disk for the OS (operating system, in my case, Windows 10) to locate files, and something on this directory is corrupted or damaged, so the OS conveniently designate it as "RAW" partition.

How did it happened? 

1. To my best knowledge, It could be caused by voltage surge when USB plug in or taken out of the PC, it is the least likely cause in this "RAW" case, if it is, the disk might not have survived and data wiped out permanently, no hardware detected, chances of recovery is next to nothing, or

2. due to malicious virus sabotage compelling victim to pay for a file recovery download to salvage their lost data. It's easier to put the blame on Viruses for unknown causes, or

3. the likelihood I feel is the OS itself, it messes the "File Table" up as it is looking up and updating the table when external devices plug in or taken out.

Above were just best guess and opinion, the search for a solution went on to the next day and yet there wasn't any light at the end, very unnerving to say the least.

SOLUTION FOUND

On the 3rd of May (2 days later), despite being in the Windows 10 era I decided to go back to basic using DOS command "chkdsk" short for "Check Disk", the name pretty much says it all. From the command prompt the outcome offered some rays of hope, it showed a summary of the file size taking up the drive with lable names, that was a step forward, but still I could not access the drive. 

Next I tried "chkdsk /f", that extra "/f" switch tells chkdsk to fix error if there's any, it was followed with a lot of listing on the black screen, finally than, a notification flew out, showing the original name of my drive with a long scrolling list of files. I did a check of file format with Disk Management with fingers crossed, it's no longer "RAW", it is shown as "NTFS", I was able to use the backup drive as usual, all the fluster was suddenly gone, life gose on like nothing had ever happened.

What the faithful chkdsk did was to correct the file table for the OS I think, but the risky thing is, "chkdsk /f" could be destructive because it rewrites the file table, thus this instruction was actually a last ditched effort, fortunately it worked like a charm.

I have had many elated moments in life, this is one exceptional case as it was a back from the brink situation which I first thought those backups were gone.
This recovery was also possible as I had not make any disk change earlier on like formatting or re-partitioning, those actions are destructive and would have dash any hope of recovery.

My solution shared is for Windows system only.
I haven't yet went beyond "chkdsk", so if this doesn't help, maybe you would like to let me know how you finally put it right, if ever. 

"Goo'd luck" (if you'd watched "Taken", you know how it sounds).

Thank you for reading

Fixed - Backup Drive appear as RAW in Disk Management

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