[Tripredacus]

I'm making this a separate thread. Here is the situation:

User has a Windows OS on a hard drive formatted NTFS. There is either a power failure or a hard shutdown is performed. Upon reboot Windows does not work. Troubleshooting with Diskpart reveals that the file system on the drive is now listed as RAW.

So here are the questions:
1. Is it possible to fix the file system to make the drive bootable again?
2. What programs can be used to recover data off a RAW volume?

This issue happened here:
http://www.msfn.org/...tartup-problem/
But since this is a general question, I can post it here if it helps others.

[jaclaz]

Tripredacus, on 19 August 2010 - 07:59 AM, said:

1. Is it possible to fix the file system to make the drive bootable again?

*usually* yes.

Tripredacus, on 19 August 2010 - 07:59 AM, said:

2. What programs can be used to recover data off a RAW volume?

Mainly, TESTDISK, but in some occasions manual intervention is faster/better (and even easier ).

Two threads about similar issues solved:
http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=145574
http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=141687


Generally speaking the RAW filesystem (provided that the partition is still actually seen) is due to a missing or plainly wrong bootsector or to a pointer in the partition table misplaced/pointing to the wrong address, the two given threads show the two mentioned different problems leading to the same effect.

Particularly I would appreciate this occsion to contradict you :

Tripredacus, on 19 August 2010 - 07:55 AM, said:

I don't think CHKDSK can "check" a RAW format disk. The unfortunate thing is that if Diskpart is seeing the disk as RAW, then your file system is corrupted. Most likely your files are still there, but your options of recovering your system as very small.

Actually the probabilities of recovering a NTFS partition that became "RAW" is very, very HIGH (nearly 100% if the problem is one of the mentioned ones or a similar one).

The problem of the OP may however come from other reasons:

Nc1224, on 11 August 2010 - 06:56 AM, said:

.... When it rebooted I got the message "Disk read error".
....
When I boot from the other HDD with the first one plugged in, windows is very sluggish and I have to reboot, but it seems to work fine if I only plug one HDD and boot from it.
.....

It could well be a dying hard disk....

Nc1224, on 11 August 2010 - 06:56 AM, said:

....
The "faulty" one is a seagate 7200.11, that I have repaired once since it suffered from a pretty well-known error with those HDD, something that It would not show up in bios, I don't know wether or not this is important.
.....

Call me any name you want , but in my book anyone who somehow escaped from the 7200.11 BSY or LBA problem and does still rely on the fixed drive (and has not a proper, Full backup) *deserves* NOT any help with data recovery...

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

Of course MSFN SuperB, that's why I made this thread also. I did not know if it was possible, so instead of just telling the user that, I help out by asking questions in the right place where the right people can answer.