[SOLVED] WD My Passport file system labelled 'RAW'

[SJGhosh]

Hello everyone,

Hope you all are doing well!

My WD hard drive had been showing problems from quite some time. I'm not able to browse it through my Windows 10 PC. It is also being undetected in other devices like Android TV.

Whenever I connect the device with PC it asks me to format it, which I obviously don't want to. Also in DiskManagement, the file system for the drive is shown as 'RAW'.

With DMDE, I can browse through the folders and the contents look all intact. I recovered one file in my local computer drive and it appeared fine as well.

Attaching a screeenshot of DMDE partition window for your perusal. Could you please help me to rectify it? Kindly guide and feel free to ask me any additional info you may need.

With a lot of hope, thanks in advance!

https://flic.kr/p/2mZbxUw

 

[Grobe]

Is this a hdd for your backups ?

This probably happens because you're disconnecting the device without properly use the safe removal feature in windows.

[edit]
Very similar thread here:

WD file system labelled 'RAW'

Hello My WD hard drive had been showing problems from quite some time. It would connect sporadically to my computer and even others. Then suddenly it completely stopped working. The icon under 'Other Drives' in Device Manager was marked by the typical 'yellow-exclamation-mark'. I tried...

forums.tomshardware.com

How important is your data on that hdd? If very important and you have no backup, then I'd suggest use a professional data recovery company to do the job, so that you don't mess it up by overwriting the file table (don't recall actual names on ntfs but doesn't matter) as can happens when trying to recover data yourself.

 

[fzabkar]

You may find that the drive mounts OK in a Linux system. If so, then you can simply save the files to another drive.

Otherwise the free version of DMDE can recover up to 4000 files from any one folder per run. The standard version costs US$20. RAISE is another inexpensive tool (US$25). It is written by the same people who produce UFS Explorer (the current gold standard in data recovery).

Be aware that a file system is seen as "raw" because Windows is unhappy about some aspect of the metadata. Therefore you should be on the lookout for problems in some of your files or folders.

I would also check the drive's SMART report. Look for reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors.

 

[SJGhosh]

You may find that the drive mounts OK in a Linux system. If so, then you can simply save the files to another drive.

Otherwise the free version of DMDE can recover up to 4000 files from any one folder per run. The standard version costs US$20. RAISE is another inexpensive tool (US$25). It is written by the same people who produce UFS Explorer (the current gold standard in data recovery).

Be aware that a file system is seen as "raw" because Windows is unhappy about some aspect of the metadata. Therefore you should be on the lookout for problems in some of your files or folders.

I would also check the drive's SMART report. Look for reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors.

Thank you for seeing into it @fzabkar . DMDE is able to recover most of the files to another drive. Unfortunately I dont have enough space in other drive to save it all. 🙁

I'm attaching the SMART report for your perusal please ..

https://flic.kr/p/2mZq87z

https://flic.kr/p/2mZpA5n

 

[Grobe]

I'm attaching the SMART report for your perusal please ..

Ok, that might explain the file system issues. So, in my opinion that hdd is not safe to use any more.

Some info good to know:

Current Pending Sector Count Warning: What You Need To Know

Current Pending Sector Count warning in CrystalDiskInfo or your S.M.A.R.T output? Find out more about the error, any fixes, and if you need a new hard drive

harddrivegeek.com

 

[fzabkar]

Read Error Rate is triggering a SMART fail. The drive can fail completely at any moment.

 

[SJGhosh]

@ fzabkar, @Grobe - What do you suggest? Should I recover data to another drive and format this disk?

I tried recovering with DMDE and it appears the free version doesn't allow to copy a folder along with the files in it. It is almost not doable to recover the full disk one file at a time with free version. 🙁

Could you please see if the drive could be made accessible anyway that would allow recovering ing the data in Windows? I was looking into @monhinz thread - 'WD file system labelled 'RAW''. Wondering if that was a similar issue (though I'm not able to see the attached scan report).

Thanks again!

 

[USAFRet]

What do you suggest? Should I recover data to another drive and format this disk?

The drive is physically failing.

Recover whatever data you can, to some other device.

 

[fzabkar]

Clone the drive with HDDSuperClone. This tool incorporates a "WD slow responding fix" that works on older models. In any case it will try to avoid a bad head until the last pass. Then you can run data recovery software against the clone.

HDDSuperClone is a Linux tool, but the author provides bootable options plus a GUI.

 

[SJGhosh]

Good morning! Thank you for all your help.

I used 'TestDisk' and performed 'NTFS Boot sector recovery'. Hereafter the device could able to boot with Windows and I could able to do a Mass back-up to another drive. Below link is very helpful on what we need to do step by step.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

I did a format of my HDD. But ChrystalDisk is still showing some error - 'Read Error Rate'. Could you please share how to rectify the same ..

https://flic.kr/p/2n1moB5