Cause of loss · RAW & corruption
What costs people their files is almost never the corruption itself; it is the repair attempted in the ten minutes after it appears. Windows can see the drive, cannot interpret what is written on it, and offers the only remedy it has — a format. That offer is the whole danger on this page, and declining it is the most useful thing anyone in Maidenhead can do before ringing us.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The signs | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it | Windows cannot make sense of the file system; RAW is the name for that state | Do not click Format |
| CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives; the file system type is RAW. | CHKDSK bowing out; there is nothing for it to fix | Stop and disconnect it |
| File or directory corrupted and unreadable (0x80070570) | MFT records that no longer parse | Stop browsing the drive |
| 0x80070571 — the disk structure is corrupted and unreadable | Harm to the MFT or partition table | Image it before repairs |
| Location is not available — X:\ cannot be accessed. The parameter is incorrect. | File-system damage, and beneath it a bad-sector field | Assume the disk is failing |
| The drive does not contain a recognized file system. | The metadata itself has gone | Underneath, the files remain |
| On a Mac: it says the disk you inserted was not readable | The Mac's version of RAW; Initialize is the button to avoid | Choose Eject, not Initialize |
Nothing becomes chargeable until you have said yes to it. Each item takes a case number of its own the moment it arrives, an engineer establishes what has actually failed, and you are given a candid view of which files stand a realistic chance of returning. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down, and costs nothing.
A sector-by-sector copy is taken before any repair is attempted, and the regions that read poorly are recorded and deferred until last. Because damaged structures and failing hardware tend to travel together, the image guards against both.
Boot sector, partition table, MFT — each is rebuilt against the image rather than the disk, which means any wrong turn can be reversed.
File contents sit where they always sat, whatever state the MFT is in. Each one is carved from the image by its signature, and folder structure is rebuilt as far as the surviving clues allow.
Nothing is billed until you have seen the recovered file list in full and told us to go ahead. What comes back arrives on new media, with the return journey at our cost, and the case stays open at this end until you have opened every file yourself.
What every repair tool has in common: CHKDSK, Disk Utility's First Aid, the free RAW fixer someone recommends on a forum — each writes to the very disk it is meant to be rescuing. Where the hardware is sound, that usually passes without consequence. Where it is not, a recovery that could have been complete comes back partial. A day spent imaging is the whole price of caution.
One evening it came out of the socket mid-write, and by morning Windows would only offer to format it. The whole disk was imaged before anything else, and the boot sector and damaged MFT mirror were repaired on that copy alone. Fifteen years of client files went home with the folder structure still standing.
Decline it. Formatting writes a fresh, empty file system over the damaged one, and the records a rebuild would have used to give your folders their names back are precisely what gets overwritten.
It means the file system is no longer legible to Windows, which normally traces back to a damaged boot sector, partition table or MFT. The file contents beneath are typically untouched.
No. CHKDSK refuses a RAW volume outright, so there is nothing to gain, and on hardware that is already weakening every pass it makes shortens what remains. Structural repairs belong on a copy.
Quite possibly, and it is a common route in: a disconnection part-way through a write leaves the index inconsistent while the files it points at survive intact.
Each further power-up asks more of a drive that has already begun to fail. Open the case first and let the free diagnosis tell you what is left.