RAW HDD recovery

[childsy_1985]

I have a 1tb WD drive that has been working fine untill I turned on my PC today. Windows now shows the drive as RAW instead of NTFS. All my data is still on the drive and I am able to access the data using a recovery tool however I am unable to recover the files as I have no other drive large enough to save them all too. I want to know if there is a way to recover the files and reset the format of the drive to NTFS at the same time. Also anyone have any ideas why this happened in the first place?

 

[turbobooster]

I had that same problem I fixed it but wasent able to keep by data.
This is what I did, I installed acronis disk doctor or any other program that let you manage you drives. (maybe windows can do it).
Then I deleted the drive and made a new 1 and format it to ntfs again

 

[johnb35]

I would use Western Digital's disk diagnostic program to check the drive for errors.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

Usually (not always) if the HDD turns to RAW then it can mean that it is slowly dying.
So backup ALL your important data RIGHT NOW before it's too late!

After that do what johnb35 suggested.
If no errors are found and all tests pass OK then simply erase the drive with KILL DISK then create a new NTFS partition which uses the entire drive and format it.





Cheers!