How to Convert/Change RAW File System to NTFS Without Data Loss - Qiling  

How to Convert/Change RAW File System to NTFS Without Data Loss


What Is RAW File System

A file system, like NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT, controls how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, you cannot access and open a storage medium, be it a hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, and more. RAW file system indicates a state of your hard drive which has no or unknown file system. A disk or drive with a RAW file system is what we called as RAW disk/drive. When a hard drive or external storage device becomes RAW, it could be:

The RAW file system can be caused by a number of reasons such as virus infection, format failure, accident shutdown of the operating system, power outages, etc. When a hard drive or external storage device becomes RAW, your device is unusable and you cannot access the files stored on it. Besides, there are some error messages you may encounter when you try to open the device or run CHKDSK on it, like "you need to format the disk in drive before you can use it" and "The type of the file system is RAW, CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."

How to Fix a Drive with RAW File System

As mentioned above, you may be prompted to format the RAW drive in order to make it ready for data storage and access. Indeed, formatting the device will assign a file system to it and thus make it usable. However, this operation will also erase the existing files on the drive. Thus, to fix a RAW drive without losing data, you need to:

Procedure 1. Recover Data from RAW Drive with Qiling Deep Data Recovery

Although the RAW drive is inaccessible when you try to open it, you can recover data from the storage medium with the help of hard drive recovery software - Deep Data Recovery. Deep data recovery software supports deleted file recovery, formatted file recovery, RAW drive recovery, and more. It will help you recover any existing files on your RAW hard drive, USB flash drive, memory card, etc.

To recover data from a drive with the RAW file system:

Step 1: Select file types that you want to recover

Launch Deep Data Recovery and select file types that you want to recover. Click the "Next" button to start.

select RAW partition and click scan

Step 2. Select and scan the RAW partition

If the RAW partition contains a partition label, you can directly select it from drives list and click "Scan" to look for the lost files. 

scan the lost partition to find desired data

Step 3. Preview found data from the scan result

After the scan is completed, all available files in the RAW hard drive will be displayed. View these files and find the files you want to recover. You can sort the scanned data by file format. 

recover all found data from RAW partition

Step 4. Recover data from RAW partition

Select all files and click "Recover" to get all the data back. Select another internal or external hard drive to save the recovered data and click "OK" to start RAW drive recovery.

Qiling Deep Data Recovery is a powerful data recovery software tool that can help get all data out from the RAW drive. After you have successfully recovered all files from your hard drive, you can now format the RAW drive to NTFS, FAT32 or other file systems with no hesitation.

Procedure 2. Convert RAW File System to NTFS by Formatting

There are generally three ways to formatting a drive, using File Explorer, Disk Management, or free format tool. Here we will show you how to format the RAW drive under File Explorer.

Step 1. Open "This PC", click your RAW drive or RAW disk and choose "Formatted".

Step 2.Set a file system (NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT) according to your needs and click "Proceed".

Change RAW file system to NTFS

Use RAW Recovery Services to Repair RAW Drive Without Formatting

If you don't want to format your hard drive, try our RAW recovery services to solve your problem. 

Consult with Qiling data recovery experts for one-on-one manual RAW recovery service. We could offer the following services after FREE diagnosis:

  • Repair damaged RAW drive without formatting
  • Recover data from RAW drive, including BitLocker encrypted drives
  • Recover RAW partition, RAW USB, RAW flash drive, RAW external hard drive, etc.

The Bottom Line

Since Qiling Data Recovery supports formatted data recovery, you can also use the software to recover files from the formatted drive if you have formatted the RAW drive before performing data recovery. For more detailed guide, refer to the video below:

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