Help! Need to recover data from RAW disk

[crankcase]

One of my secondary hard disks seems to have gone RAW and can't be accessed properly. Symptoms as follows

Disk shows up in under my PC in Explorer, with the correct name and free space


Trying to access it results in an error saying the drive is not accessible


Trying to run Chkdsk gives the error that the disk is RAW
"The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."

But if I type a folder name directly into explorer, I can access the folder listing as if everything is fine


A couple of the files could even be opened normally by double-clicking, but not many.

I have tried using AOMEI Partition Assistant to Rebuild MBR, but although it displayed a success message, it didn't actually achieve anything.

I tried Recuva, but it gave the same "not accessible error" when I tried to select the drive.

I am now running TestDisk to try and recover my Boot Partition, and it looks like it's going to take a while.




Any other suggestions on what I might be able to try? I REALLY want to save my data. Thanks in advance!

 

[crankcase]

Update: I cancelled TestDisk and ran DiskDrill instead. I hoped it would be faster, but its estimated run time is also like 10 days


While this was going on, I opened Disk Management, and got a popup to initialise the disk, with options of GPT and MBR. I chose GPT and continued, but it said the device didn't exist.

I did a Rescan and the disk disappeared entirely from all views. DiskDrill also halted with an error saying the device was gone. Going to restart the PC and see if it comes back.

EDIT: Nope, all trace of it has disappeared after the restart. What are my options now....?

 

[crankcase]

UPDATE 2: The disk is visible in the BIOS menu. Booting up takes MUCH longer than normal. Once booted up, the disk is not visible from any application or menu.

HELP!

 

[AFFASocial]

One of my secondary hard disks seems to have gone RAW and can't be accessed properly. Symptoms as follows

Disk shows up in under my PC in Explorer, with the correct name and free space
View attachment 6690

Trying to access it results in an error saying the drive is not accessible
View attachment 6691

Trying to run Chkdsk gives the error that the disk is RAW
"The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."

But if I type a folder name directly into explorer, I can access the folder listing as if everything is fine
View attachment 6692

A couple of the files could even be opened normally by double-clicking, but not many.

I have tried using AOMEI Partition Assistant to Rebuild MBR, but although it displayed a success message, it didn't actually achieve anything.

I tried Recuva, but it gave the same "not accessible error" when I tried to select the drive.

I am now running TestDisk to try and recover my Boot Partition, and it looks like it's going to take a while.
View attachment 6693



Any other suggestions on what I might be able to try? I REALLY want to save my data. Thanks in advance!

How to Convert RAW to NTFS Without Losing Data (SOLVED)​

https://www.cleverfiles.com/howto/raw-partition-recovery.html

This will likely solve your issue

 

[crankcase]

How to Convert RAW to NTFS Without Losing Data (SOLVED)​

https://www.cleverfiles.com/howto/raw-partition-recovery.html

This will likely solve your issue

I was trying this with TestDisk and DiskDrill, but neither of these programs can see it any more.

It only shows up under Disk Management as Not Initialized, but the "Initialize Disk" option gives an error that the device doesn't exist





AOMEI Partition Assistant is also able to see it, but again the Initialize option results in an error


(the web page has nothing useful on this either)

Any other tools I can use for this?

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Any idea what initially caused your problem in the first place?
I would mirror whatever is left onto a known healthy hard drive (Clonezilla, etc.).
Your problem could be a result of some sort of hardware failure (controller board, reading head(s)) or not. If it is I doubt a software solution is going to fix that.
My point is doing a bit for bit copy and then manipulate that mirror image not only gives you the best chance of at least a partial recovery but does not further damage the original. Those recovery programs can stress the heck out of a drive that may be on the way out. To be honest given what has happened so far it's going to be hit or miss. If what's on the drive is so important, time to call in the pros. Otherwise, recover what you can then test the original drive to find out exactly what happened.

 

[crankcase]

No idea on the cause, but it's a pretty old drive, so it's probably just age.

The problem now is that although the drive is detected in the BIOS and the Disk Management, it can't be initialised. I don't know if a bit-by-bit copy will work in this case but I'll try.

I also took the disk out and tried connecting it via an external SATA-USB connector, but I can't even feel it spinning. Perhaps as you said, the whole controller board is shot. I'll pop it back in and then try the bitwise copy otherwise I guess I gotta engage some pro services. The data is pretty crucial, and I'm the big idiot for not backing it up ‍

 

[crankcase]

So with some kind of miracle, when I plugged the disk back into the PC (at its original SATA slot), it was suddenly behaving as normal again.

I took this opportunity to make a byte-by-byte copy using DiskDrill. It did turn up a few bad sectors, but after like 8 passes, it was a pretty small amount.

Unfortunately the free version of DiskDrill wouldn't let me recover more than 1GB of files(!) - I was under the impression its limit was 500GB. So now I'm using TestDisk to try and recover files from that image. Hope it works.

Next step of course is to get a couple of new disks - one to replace the spoilt one and another HUGE one for backing up all the others.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

The data is pretty crucial, and I'm the big idiot for not backing it up ‍

Brother I used to manage a repair facility, that was the old refrain. If I had a Quarter for every time I heard that. I used to have women break down and cry in front of me when they found out all their family pictures for the last x.amount of years may be gone forever or it going to cost a fortune to retrieve them. Heck Google gives you 5GB off-site redundant storage for free so there is no excuse. I used to try and school customers before disaster struck. My shop was in a very large urban environment and even laptop theft was an issue.
Figure 10 years ago people thought those 2 1/2" laptop spinner hard drives were secure. Try someone tripping over the power cord when the system was on and you tell me what you think happens next. The angry ones were tough to deal with, like I had something to do with it.