How to recover data when Windows alerts "Disk is not formatted"?

Issue

Windows alerts "Disk is not formatted" as following when you access the drive which has important data on it, how to deal with it?

Solution

In this situation, the file system is shown as "RAW" when you check the drive property. If we click "No", the drive cannot be accessed. On contrary, if we click "Yes", we will lose all of the files stored on this drive. So we cannot store data on it any more or even access it. Don't format it, it is important.

How to access data stored in it?

In most situations, the file system of the drive was damaged. If its DBR was damaged, you can fix boot sector with partition recovery software. After fixing it, you can access the data as normal.

Another way is to recover data with data recovery software, after you get all data back, format it and then copy data back if necessary.

Recover data from RAW drive

If you decide to rescue the data in the RAW drive through data recovery software, there are hundreds of freeware for you. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free is a good choice for it provides "Complete Recovery" module focusing on data recovery from formatted and RAW drive. Download it at the download page, choose "Complete Recovery" and specify certain file types to search (if you are very clear about the file types of all data in the RAW drive and much time can be saved to pick the right data you want to recover at the search result page). Then let the program scan the RAW drive and the search result will be listed out within a few minutes. There you can find what you want to get back and transfer them to a safer place.

After that, format the RAW drive and you will find the inaccessible drive becomes accessible again. If you think it necessary, you can copy all data back to where they before. 

Don't let this happen again

RAW drive often happens without notice. To get rid of this trouble, you should avoid some wrong doings that might cause the drive damaged. A good method is to backup up your data so that you always have a backup of your information when this unfortunate thing falls on you.

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