Can I recover data from a formatted external hard drive

The most annoying experience on a storage media is its file system has been changed to RAW, because you cannot access a RAW drive. You may feel quite upset with the inaccessible data from a RAW drive. Usually, RAW drive error is a quite common problem that often occurs on different storage media like memory card, USB flash drive, external hard disk drive, hard disk drive, pen drive and more. Then, how to get back data from a RAW drive? Such kind of problem can often be found on forums or online. For example:

"Hello. When I insert my 8GB SD card to my smartphone, I cannot find any data because it says there is no valid storage media. Then, I put out the SD card and connect it to my computer. However, it shows as a removable device on my computer and Windows recognizes it as a RAW drive. When clicking the SD card, Windows asks me to format the SD card. How can I access the SD card and get back files on the card? Thanks for your help!"

"I have a 500GB Seagate external hard disk. I often like to store some important data to this external hard disk to make backup. Yesterday, I moved all important files from my computer's hard disk to this Seagate external hard disk and reinstall the system. However, after reinstalling system, my computer cannot recognize the Seagate external hard disk anymore. It says that the external hard disk needs to be formatted with RAW file system. How can I recover the lost files from a RAW external hard disk?"

Data Recovery from a RAW File System

For a RAW file system recovery, professional RAW drive recovery software is needed. Although you are not allowed to access data stored on a RAW drive, the data is still intact on the drive. Therefore, you need to recover the files you need first of all. Since files will be unrecoverable if they have been overwritten, you should always remember not to risk overwriting the hard disk drive due to any reason.

After recovering files with help of RAW recovery software, you can fix the RAW file system by formatting. The reason why you cannot perform a format before data recovery is that you may make mistake to overwrite the lost data after formatting.

RAW Error on External Devices

RAW drive error can not only occurs on hard disk drive, but also it can occurs on almost all storage devices such as external hard disk drive, memory card, USB flash drive, pen drive, etc. No matter the RAW drive error is happen to a hard disk drive or any other external storage device, you should remember that you always need to restore data first before you can do anything to the device. Otherwise, you may lose the best chance for data recovery. Even worse, you may lose everything stored on the RAW drive permanently.

Memory Card RAW File System

When inserting a memory card into a digital camera or smartphone, system may say memory card is not formatted or there is no memory card. When connecting the memory card to a computer, you can check its property and find its file system is shown as RAW drive. By the way, when you want to recover data from a memory card with not formatted error, you need to connect the card to a PC since you cannot perform file recovery on digital camera or smartphone.

USB Flash Drive RAW File System

In addition to external hard disk, USB flash drive is another most widely used external storage media for data storage and transferring. Although the capacity of a USB flash drive is usually smaller than an external hard disk, it is still helpful and convenient. When a USB flash drive shows RAW file system and becomes inaccessible, you will still feel upset if there is important data on the drive. Fortunately, RAW recovery software is capable of retrieving files from RAW USB flash drive easily.

Common Reasons for RAW File System

Usually, the RAW drive error is caused by virus infection, bad sectors, and improper operation and so on.
1. When memory card, external hard disk or USB flash drive is infected with virus, the data inside might be corrupted. In this situation, you may run into RAW drive error problem. In order to avoid RAW file system due to virus infection, you should always protect your card, external hard disk, flash drive, etc from suffering any possible virus of spyware. You had better also install anti-virus software on your computer.
2. When you want to remove your memory card, external hard disk or flash drive, you should turn off the device. For instance, you cannot remove them from your computer while data transferring or data writing. In addition, you should protect the storage device from suffering physically damage.