USB Flash Drive Becomes RAW
USB flash drive is a commonly-used portable storage drive to help you to save files and information that you want to take with you or transfer between devices. Of course, you can save some files to a USB flash drive for some other reasons. Besides, you can also install Windows 11 onto a USB drive for a system installation or repair.
During the use process of a USB flash drive, some unexpected things may happen. For example, you can’t open a USB flash drive and discover that it becomes RAW while checking its file system.
A USB flash drive could turn RAW due to a virus or malware attack, files transfer interruption, or accidental formatting.
If there are no important files on the drive, the thing will be easy. You can just format the drive to normal. However, if you still need to use the files, you should think about how to recover data from a RAW flash drive before fixing the RAW drive.
You’d better use dedicated data recovery software to rescue your files from a RAW USB flash drive. This can guarantee that you can get the best data recovery effect.
MiniTool Software thinks you should keep reading to get more information on RAW USB flash drive data recovery.
How to Recover Data from a RAW USB Flash Drive Free?
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is specially designed to recover almost all kinds of files from USB flash drives, computer internal hard drives, external hard drives, SSDs, memory cards, SD cards, pen drives, etc.
This is the best free data recovery software that can run on all Windows versions. You can assign it to scan the drive you want to recover data from, and it will show you the deleted, lost, and existing files on that drive even if it becomes inaccessible. So, this software is available to recover data from a RAW USB flash drive.
This MiniTool data recovery software has more than 10-year’s history and millions of users all over the world. The scanning process will not destroy the files on the drive. You can trust this software.
If you are not sure if this software works to find and recover your files, you can first try MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition. This freeware allows you to scan your USB drive and recover 1 GB of files in total.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
You can download and install this free file recovery tool on your PC, then use these steps to recover data from your USB flash drive that turns to RAW:
Step 1: Make sure the target USB flash drive is plugged in.
Step 2: Launch the software to enter its main interface.
Step 3: All detected partitions are listed under Logical Devices. You need to check if the RAW USB flash drive is there. If yes, you can continue with the next step.
Step 4: Hove over that USB flash drive and then click the Scan button to start scanning that drive.
Step 5: The scanning will last for some minutes. The time depends on the size of the USB flash drive and the files in it. You should wait patiently until the whole scanning process ends. You will get the best data recovery effect by doing this.
After scanning, this software will list the scanned files by path by default. You can open the path to find your needed files.
Some functions in the scan results interface can help you easily and quickly find your needed files:
- Type: After you switch to the Type tab, this software will show the scanned files by type. You can find your files by type if you only need to recover certain types of files.
- Filter: After clicking the Filter button, you can filter the scanned files by file type, date modified, file size, and file category.
- Search: The search feature allows you to search for your needed files by name. You can directly locate your files by name.
- Preview: This software allows you to preview up to 70 types of files. If you are not sure if the scanned files are the files you want to recover, you can use this feature to preview files for confirmation.
The package of the previewer is not pre-installed in MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition. If you use this feature for the first time in this freeware, you will need to first install the package.
Select the files you want to recover. You can select all your needed files from different folders at the same time.
Step 6: Click the Save button. Then, you will see a small interface pops up. Next, you need to select a suitable location to save the selected files. Of course, you should not select the original USB flash drive as the destination to save these files.
Step 7: Click the OK button to start saving the selected files.
Step 8: After data recovery, you will see the following interface. You can click the View Recovered button to immediately open the destination folder.
The recovered files can be used immediately.
You see it is easy to recover data from a RAW USB flash drive using MiniTool Power Data Recovery. Just try it to rescue your files.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
If you are sure this software can find and recover your files, you can feel free to use an advanced edition of this software to recover more files. MiniTool Software offers different editions for both personal users and business users. You can select one suitable edition according to your situation and requirements.
More information about MiniTool Power Data Recovery
This software can work in different situations.
- If you permanently delete your files by mistake, you can use it to get your files back.
- If your drive becomes inaccessible for some reason, you can rescue your files using this software.
- If your PC won’t boot, you can use the bootable edition of this software to create a bootable drive, then boot your computer from the bootable drive and recover data from the unbootable PC.
Although this software can’t help you fix your storage drive’s issues, it can help recover your vital data. This is an important step.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
How to Fix RAW USB Flash Drive?
Now, your files are safe. You can take measures to fix the RAW USB drive. Here are some easy and effective methods you can try.
Way 1: Error Check the RAW USB Flash Drive
Windows itself has an error checking tool to help you fix the drive problem. You can try it:
Step 1: Right-click the USB flash drive in File Explorer and select Properties.
Step 2: Switch to the Tools tab and click the Check button.
Step 3: Click Scan and Repair drive on the pop-up interface to run this tool to fix the RAW USB flash drive.
However, if you receive an error saying This disk check could not be performed because Windows can’t access the disk, this means that this tool doesn’t work in a situation like this. You can try the next solution.
Way 2: Fix the RAW USB Flash Drive Using CMD
You can run CHKDSK in Command Prompt to fix the RAW USB flash drive. Here is a guide:
Step 1: Click the search icon from the taskbar and enter cmd into the search box.
Step 2: Command Prompt should be the best match. You can right-click it and select Run as administrator. You can also click Run as administrator from the right panel. This will run Command Prompt as administrator and this is a necessary step.
Step 3: Enter chkdsk /f /r H: (you should replace H with the drive letter of your USB flash drive) into Command Prompt and press Enter to run it.
However, this method might also doesn’t work for you due to CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.
To completely solve the RAW USB flash drive, you will need to format it to normal.
Way 3: Format the RAW Flash Drive to Normal
Formatting a storage drive means deleting all files and information on the drive and setting up a file system to prepare an available space for the operating system. If your USB flash drive turns to RAW, you can format it to fix it.
You can use a special USB format tool to do the job. You can also Windows snap-in tools to format the RAW USB drive. We will introduce 3 methods here.
Choice 1: Use MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard is a partition manager for Windows. It works like Disk Management, but it has more useful features that don’t exist in Disk Management.
Format Partition is a basic feature of this tool. You can use it to format the RAW USB drive to normal. This feature is available in MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition.
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard on your PC.
Step 2: Make sure the USB flash drive is plugged in.
Step 3: Launch the software to enter its main interface.
Step 4: Right-click the USB drive and select Format.
Step 5: Assign partition label, file system, and cluster size (if necessary) for the USB drive.
Step 6: Click the Apply button to make the USB drive format effect.
MiniTool Partition Wizard has numerous features that are often used in daily life. For example, if your C drive is full, you can use the Extend Partition feature to add more space to the C drive. If you want to sell your old computer, you can use the Wipe Disk feature to wipe all files and information on the disk to protect your privacy.
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Choice 2: Format the RAW USB Flash Drive in File Explorer
If you don’t want to use a third-party tool to format the RAW USB flash drive, you can directly format it in File Explorer:
Step 1: Right-click the RAW USB flash drive and select Format.
Step 2: Select your needed file system.
Step 3: If you want to perform a deep format, you need to deselect Quick Format.
Step 4: Click the Start button to start formatting the USB drive.
Choice 3: Use Disk Management
Step 1: Right-click This PC on the desktop and select Manage.
Step 2: On the pop-up interface, click Disk Management under Storage to open it.
Step 3: Right-click the target USB drive and select Format.
Step 4: Assign partition label, file system, and cluster size (if necessary) for the USB drive.
Step 5: Clear the checkbox next to Perform a quick format if you want to run a deep format.
Step 6: Click OK to start formatting the USB flash drive.
These are the free ways to format a RAW USB flash drive. You can select one way accordingly.
Bottom Line
Want to recover data from a RAW USB flash drive for free? MiniTool Power Data Recovery is worth trying. We hope this is the tool you are looking for. You can also find some solutions to fixing the RAW USB flash drive. Formatting the USB drive is the best way to fix the issue. With data recovery software, you don’t have to worry about data loss.
If you have some issues related to this data store tool, you can contact [email protected].
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 7 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.