“CHKDSK Is Not Available for RAW Drive”
This type of message is quite common when you are dealing with hard drives and secondary storage devices. When you try to access a drive, the system shows a “CHKDSK” error message. This means that your drive has become RAW.
What Does RAW Mean?
A RAW hard drive means that its file system is not recognizable by your system. This happens due to the following reasons.
- The drive does not have any file system.
- The drive has a different file system that is not supported by your system.
- The file system of the drive has been damaged or corrupted.
- Incomplete formatting of the drive.
No matter the scenario, when your hard drive becomes RAW, “CHKDSK Is Not Available For RAW Drive” error messages are shown to the users. Further messages will appear where the system will ask you to format the drive before using it.
How to Fix “CHKDSK” Error?
When the drive becomes RAW, all the data inside the file becomes inaccessible. To access the data from a RAW drive, you need to convert the RAW drive into the NTFS file system. By doing so, you assign a new file system to your drive.
Here are a few solutions that will help fix “CHKDSK Is Not Available for RAW Drive”.
Solution 1: Using Free Data Recovery Software
The only way to access the RAW drive files and secure them is by using data recovery software. When we are talking about free RAW drive data recovery software, the first name that comes into our mind is iBoysoft Data Recovery.
This is how iBoysoft Data Recovery can help you fix the “CHKDSK” error.
Locate & Scan the RAW drive
Select the RAW hard drive for the scan. If you find it hard to locate the RAW drive, remember that it is considered a lost partition when a drive becomes RAW.
Preview the Results
Find the RAW drive’s data after the scanning process is completed. You can use the filter features to narrow down your search.
Restore the Data
Choose the RAW drive’s data and click Recover. While moving forward with this process, you need to give the recovery drive location to recover all your data.
Besides RAW data recovery, iBoysoft Data Recovery also designed to recover deleted files, recover lost data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted hard disks, recover data from deleted or lost partitions, etc. The software not only works on a major Windows operating system but also supports comprehensive Mac data recovery.
Solution 2: Format the Drive Using Disc Management Utility
Using command prompt and disk management utility to fix your RAW drive.
- Click Windows + R.
- Type:msc. Disk management utility will open.
- Right-click the RAW drive.
- Select a file system.
- Press the Enter
Following these steps will reformat your RAW drive in a file system that your operating system recognizes.
Solution 3: Use DISKPART Command
You can use the DISKPART command to fix the CHKDSK error.
- Go to windows search text.
- Type cmd.
- Right-click the command prompt, a list of options will be shown.
- Select “Run as Administrator”.
- A permission prompt will appear on the screen. Grant the permission and move forward with the steps.
- A Command Prompt window will appear.
- Type: diskpart and press Enter.
- Type: list disk and hit enter.
- Select the RAW drive from the list. Usually, RAW drives are marked with Drive 0.
- Now, type: list volume and hit enter.
- Select the volume of the drive.
- Type command: fs:ntfs. This is the file system in which your RAW drive is formatted.
- Exit once the drive is formatted.
The Bottom Line
We know that CHKDSK commands help users to fix drive corruption, but there are times when the CHKDSK command itself fails to perform, leaving the drive into RAW format. This can leave you in a critical solution where you cannot access the files or folders of the drive.
Yes, you might access the data after formatting it; however, formatting the data will make you lose all your drive data. So, we would like to advise you not to format your drive; instead, try the solution we mentioned above.
