Guibord Research and Development Laboratory, Inc.

How to Fix/Repair a RAW Drive

2016 © Guibord Research and Development Laboratory, Inc.

A RAW drive is a hard drive on which the reference data (master boot record, partition records, etc.) is corrupt.
The reference data is used by the operating system (OS) to read the location of other data on the drive (files,
pictures, etc.). This can be caused by a virus, formatting failures, power failures, accidental shutdowns of the OS,
etc.

For the purpose of this article, we will use Disk 1 (Volume D) in the example illustrated below.

Typical Disk Management window listing a RAW drive

(Disk letters, numbers, size, etc. will be different for your PC)
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

Typically, Windows’ chkdsk (check disk) is unable to repair a RAW drive.

You essentially have two options:

1 — The data on the drive is important to you

Do NOT attempt to write anything to the drive. Otherwise you may lose data that is important to you. You can likely
recover most if not all the data on your drive. Data recovery is beyond the scope of this article. However, the free
tool TestDisk can likely recover your data.

Once you’ve recovered your data, you can proceed to the next step to repair your RAW drive.

2 — The data on the drive is NOT important to you

DiskPart is a Microsoft tool, and it works well. With DiskPart you can repair your RAW drive.

Best procedure using DiskPart to repair your RAW drive

Open a DOS command prompt and run it as an administrator (Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt ;
right click on the icon of the command prompt and use Run as administrator).

At the command prompt, type DISKPART

You should now see something akin to the following:

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.0.6002

Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: The computer name listed here should be your computer’s name

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type LIST DISK

You should now see something akin to the following (disk numbers, size, etc. will differ on your PC):

DISKPART> LIST DISK

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt

-------- -------- ------ ------ --- ---
Disk 0 Online 233 GB 2048 KB
Disk 1 Online 932 GB 0 KB
Disk 2 Online 466 GB 0 KB

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type SELECT DISK 1

Here, Disk 1 is only an example; the disk number for your RAW drive will likely differ. Make sure to use to correct
disk number that you’ve identified as your RAW drive in the Computer Management > Disk Management
window for your PC.
You should now see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> SELECT DISK 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type LIST VOLUME

You should now see something akin to the following (volume numbers, size, etc. will be different for your PC):

DISKPART> LIST VOLUME

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info

---------- --- ---------- ----- --------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 E DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 233 GB Healthy System
Volume 2 D RAW Partition 932 GB Healthy
Volume 3 F backup_PC-1 NTFS Partition 466 GB Healthy

DISKPART> _

Volume number for your RAW drive will likely differ. For the next step, make sure to select the volume number that
corresponds to the RAW drive that you want to repair.

At the command prompt, type SELECT VOLUME 2

Here, Volume 2 is only an example; the volume number for your RAW drive will likely differ. Make sure to use to
correct volume number for your RAW drive.
You should now see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> SELECT VOLUME 2

Volume 2 is the selected volume.

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type CLEAN

NOTE: There is an option for the CLEAN command. That option is ALL. It specifies that each and every sector on
the disk is zeroed, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk. If the disk is significant in size (e.g.,
more than 500 GB), execution of the CLEAN command with the ALL option may take several hours to complete.
Once you’ve gone through the entire procedure described in this article, if your drive is still RAW, repeating this
procedure with the ALL option for the CLEAN command should fix the problem.
You should now see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> CLEAN

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

You should now see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type ACTIVE

You should now see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> ACTIVE

DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type LIST PARTITION

You should now see something akin to the following (size, etc. will be different for your PC):

DISKPART> LIST PARTITION

Partition ### Type Size Offset

------------- ------------- ------- -------
* Partition 1 Primary 932 GB 1024 KB

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type SELECT PARTITION 1

You should now see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> SELECT PARTITION 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> _

At the command prompt, type FORMAT OVERRIDE QUICK LABEL=FixedDrv

NOTE: If the default file system for your OS is, say as an example, NTFS, do not specify the file system type in
the format command. For some reason, specifying a file system the same as the default file system for your OS
may cause the execution of the formatting command to hang (stall).
Depending on the size of your drive, it may take up to, very approximately, 30 minutes for the formatting process
to complete.
Once completed, you should see something akin to the following:

DISKPART> FORMAT OVERRIDE QUICK LABEL=FixedDrv

100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> _

To exit DISKPART, type EXIT at the command prompt.