HDD showing as 'RAW', rebuild file table? Rebuild partition? Recover files?

Windows 11 Pro

I've got an HDD that WAS fine, and suddenly shows the partition on it in "RAW". Windows, of course, won't do anything with it. Chkdsk says it's bad and pukes.

I ran one of the "free" utilities and it can SEE the files on the partition, so the data is there (I presume).

In my searching I'm finding terms like rebuilding file tables, recovering partition, rebuilding MBR(?), etc... But not much info on what I ACTUALLY NEED to do.

What do I need to do to either make this partition usable again (it's a 3TB HDD so I presume it was GPT and NTFS)? OR, do I have to find some hopefully free utility to extract the files from this partition to a different location then reformat the drive? My preference would be to simply have a utility recreate whatever got messed up and make this partition functional again with all the files.

At the MOMENT, Minitool Partition Wizard is scanning the partition to do a "partition recovery", but it hasn't actually TOUCHED anything yet...

If the data is vital it is sensible to use data recovery to copy off whatever is essential first.

It's a backup drive with some old data on it that I'll probably never need again. It's not worth buying special software just for something that happens once in a decade. If there actually IS a free utility for doing file recovery - that actually RECOVERS a couple hundred GB of data, great. Otherwise, I'll see what this partition recovery can do - presuming IT actually works...

Is the previous reply for "FreeBooter" a commercial pimping some product? 'Cause it doesn't appear to provide any information relevant to fixing the problem.

you use free command-line software called TestDisk to repair RAW file system.

If there actually IS a free utility for doing file recovery - that actually RECOVERS a couple hundred GB of data, great.

Click to expand...

sure there is minitool power data recovery a few years old, still works great pdr6free.exe

I got it years ago from a site called last freeware versions which is no longer, a bit of hunting reveals
it has been uploaded by a korean blogger
MiniTool Power Data Recovery 6.5 Free Edition

.egg extension can be extracted with 7-zip

SIW2 said:

it has been uploaded by a korean blogger

Click to expand...

Maybe a little more reliable source is here. MiniTool Power Data Recovery | Free File Recovery Tool for Windows

I found the Korean version, but it wants me to log into something called NAVER, and everything is in Korean.

I found a US site with a version, but it was 6.6, not 6.5. And the version in the most recent reply APPEARS to be 11.5, which I presume DOESN'T work if people are still using 6.5... BUT, will 6.6 work or is that when they started charging?

And if 6.6 WILL work, what am I recovering? It doesn't look like it's a file recovery tool, so am I just doing a damaged partition recovery or a lost partition recovery? Or what?

I didnt need to log in. Click the green arrow and it downloads immediately.



as far as I know 6.5.01 is the last free version that allows unlimited recovery.


then after it downloads, extract with 7-zip




and there is it




when you run pdr6free.exe it asks where you want to install it. Doesnt really install, it just extracts and runs portably so you can "install" it to any ntfs/fat32 partition .

I have had it for a few years, works well.

OK, it's churning away - says about 5 hours...

3tb will take a while.

Well, THAT was interesting... It found a bunch of files, but it renamed everything and changed the file extension on a bunch. A lot of what was on there was images, most of the RAW image files from different cameras. Some came through OK, but a lot of them are bad.

At this point, I guess I'll let the mini tool Partition Recovery TRY to "recover", whatever that means - HOPEFULLY it'll rebuild the file system, but...

Update: The RAW disk is now visible, and what's on it is still unreadable...