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This all started wiht a rootkit virus, got a new hard drive, reloading everything.

Now i have the old C and F drive, both sata. Got bitdefender running and comodo firewall, now.

Win7 system, using USB connection(safer then direct connect sata, i think) C - not trying yet. F - treid it but it is coming up as file system RAW. Can't access the data on it. Tried Convert F: fs:ntfs, no luck

On my old system(XP finally got to boot up) C - it did read this one, but the drive sounded like it was trying to boot, which is fine on that system, old and corrupt anyway. F - did the same, Not Accessible.

I guess i have a couple of options. F - is gone forever F - hook up as it was before to sata connection, (not sure if it was corrupted by virus, and if it is will it infect the new system) C - try hooking up c thru USB and hope it does not infect, this drive has some of the data i need on it. I was copying it off to F hoping to just clean and get the data off of it, sine C's MBR is currupted.

Any suggestions or ideas? Would it be safe to reconnect F back to the sata connection(not the USB one)?

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  • "RAW" is not a file system. You cannot "convert" it in any way. "RAW" is just how Windows tells you that it did not recognize any file system there – usually because it's corrupted.
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Sep 8, 2012 at 0:00

3 Answers 3

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RAW file system is really a common drive problem. Don’t worry!

You also have the possibility to save both of your drive and data inside it as long as you do the right steps:

  1. Stop saving anything new on this drive in case of rewriting the original data.
  2. Select a reliable recovery tool to save your data. You should Google “recovery tool” on and select a proper and professional recovery tool to restore your data.
  3. Store the recovered data on another drive to keep it safely.
  4. Format this drive to see whether it could work as before.
  5. Never forget to back up your important data in safe places.
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  • Been using Easeus, and been getting most of the stuff off if it. Seems like when i try to get all folder/files, it comes up corrupt, so been getting stuff in small checks as i need it. Almost got it all by. But yes, i now have a back up system in place, and separate(which was the old c drive) as back up only drive. Probably going put the original build backup out in the cloud somewhere.
    – user35563
    Commented Dec 26, 2012 at 16:04
  • Super User is not the place to spam for products. If you happen to be affiliated with something you recommend, mention that please. I'm going to let that post stay, but don't sneak in that kind of promotion.
    – slhck
    Commented Dec 27, 2012 at 7:36
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Your best bet is to try some NTFS recovery software. If something like the MBR is corrupted, what most OSes do is both the safest and most dangerous: "I don't know how to read this. Would you like to reformat it?" Good recovery software can make assumptions, like: "The partition table is empty, but if this whole drive was partitioned as NTFS, where would the file structures be?" They can also do searches to find fragments of file structures. Doing so might recover some or even all your data.

If physical damage (sectors going bad) is not an issue, the safest thing would be to make a block-level copy of the drives, and then have the recovery software work on the copies. That way, if one program screws up and causes more damage (either automatically or at your direction), you can start over with another.

I cannot recommend any specific programs. I vaguely recall trying one that did work once, but don't remember which one it was.

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  • The MBR is not on F drive, would it be safe to connect back like it was originally? see if the system at startup can read it?
    – user35563
    Commented Sep 8, 2012 at 0:32
  • If there is no MBR, then the system will not read it as-is; you must recover it first. It would be OK to try. If you think there are infected programs on it, then as long as you don't execute anything, you are "mostly safe" from being reinfected, if that's your question. Note that you want avoid recovering virus-infected programs; copy only your data and reinstall all your apps.
    – Ken
    Commented Sep 8, 2012 at 0:43
  • Going to do a little research on ntfs recovery. What can i do wiht the C drive, I can read that on my old XP system(not worried if it gets infected) I could see the Boot section in disk management, is it possible to remove that or stop it from trying to boot?
    – user35563
    Commented Sep 8, 2012 at 1:20
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In my experience, RAW was reported by Windows7 on a SATA-Harddisk that I took from a desktop PC and mounted in an external SATA-USB case, as a temporary way to access the data.
But, the drive worked perfectly when I attached it on the desktop-PCs SATA interface again.
It seems that the common SATA-USB interfaces report disk parameters in a way different from a direct SATA interface, and Windows interprets this as unreadable.

So in this case, nothing is corrupted, nothing needs to be recovered.
If you want to access the disk with a direct-SATA interface again, do not use any tool that 'repairs the partition table' or the like.

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