RAW file system on hard drive - no NTFS or FAT32?
 

I have a Seagate USB2 hard drive which became kind of corrupt or inaccessible. Then my local comper shop guy put the core hard drive into another USB enclosure and it started working. After a couple of years, the drive again went inaccessible.

This time I removed the enclosure, took out the core hard drive, connected it to my computer using ATA (???) cable. The computer reported that the drive is inaccessible, and reported it is in a file system called 'RAW'.

Is there any way I can recover the files from this hard drive (the free way)?

regards

Unfortunately there is no real "free" way of recovering the data. You will have to use a data recovery software and that can range from 50-200.

To get a better idea of whats happening (it might be something else causing the problem), are you Mac or Windows, and if windows what version?
When you say the ATA cable, is it a SATA cable or a PATA IDE cable? SATA cables have a small flat connector and IDE cables have a wider 80 pin connectors.

-JMP

Thanks.

I am using Windows 7 Home Basic.

I beleive it is IDE. For power, it has 4 circular holes.

If at all possible, do you know what the make/model of the enclosure you were using?
The power connector you described is a molex, and it can actually be found on both IDE and SATA drives, but it sounds like you have an IDE drive (I haven't seen a molex connector on a SATA drive in many years).

One possibility of why it is coming up as RAW is if the cable has been inserted upside down or backwards.
Another possibility is that the drive has reached the end of its life. IDE drives have become obsolete as SATA has become the new tech for hard drive connections. Faster data rates, ease of connection and ability to hot swap drives on a running machine.

The first step I would take is to ensure that you have the cables properly plugged in to both the hard drive and motherboard.
If that fails to yield any results, the next step would be to try and find another enclosure like you had.
Also, does the drive make any unnatural noise like clicking or clacking? And can you hear the drive spin up/down, or being accessed?

-JMP

I will take pictures and update this thread when I go home.

The enclosure brand is not internationally known (I am not in USA).

I guess your 'end of life for the drive' could be a possible reason, since the drive was purchased in 2005.

Regards

I second JMP's thoughts, but you could also try the trial version of this software and see if you can use it to recover your data. It claims to support raw format hard drives.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywi...-raw-drive.htm