How to recover files from RAW flash drive?

The symptom of RAW flash drive

When you receive the following messages like, that means your flash drive has become "RAW".

• Abort, Retry, Fail?
• Invalid media type reading drive. File system is displayed as "RAW".
• "Disk not formatted; do you want to format now?"
• File names contain "weird" characters.
• "Sector not found" messages.

You may feel confused why a second before your flash drive works well and a second later it becomes RAW and can't be accessed any more. Things would always go like this and even you don't know what's going on.

The outcome of flash drive becoming RAW is that you can't access it. This means you can't explore data stored in it and also it is impossible to store something into it. Find a way to figure this out or your flash drive will become useless.

Ways to solve RAW flash drive problem

One way is to format this RAW flash drive, and after formatting this flash drive will becomes accessible again. This is recommended for there is no important or needed information in this flash drive. Losing the data in it is not a big deal. Then go ahead and just format it. You will find formatting makes it accessible again and of course all data in it has gone.

Another way is recommended if there are very important files in this RAW flash drive. Using data recovery software to retrieve data from the RAW drive first and after that, you can format the flash drive as you wish. With EaseUS data recovery software, you have nothing to lose and all files you want in this drive can be retrieved. If you want to find what you lost back, you shouldn't format it which might make things more difficult.

Free data recovery software

This freeware provides "Complete Recovery" module for Raw drive or formatted recovery by scanning the RAW flash drive and finding all lost data you stored in it. Choosing the right RAW drive recovery tool is the crucial step of data recovery.

Backup your data.

Always have a backup. You will benefit from this sooner or later.

Related Articles

• How to recover data from inaccessible drive?
• How to recover data when file system shows RAW?
• RAW drive recovery tutorial
• How to recover RAW drive?
• How to convert RAW drive to NTFS?
• How to recover data after quick format?
• How to unformat external hard drive?
• How to recover files from formatted drive?

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