Cause of loss · corruption & RAW
Windows has one answer for a volume it cannot read, and that answer is Format. It can see the disk. It cannot make sense of the structures written on it. So it offers the only tool in its box. Most files lost to corruption go in the few minutes after that box appears, not to the corruption itself.
Tell an engineer what it is doing
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| Symptoms | What is behind it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it | The file system is unreadable to Windows, and RAW is what it calls that | Never press Format |
| CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives. File system type: RAW. | CHKDSK declining the job; it has nothing it can repair | Unplug it and stop |
| File or directory corrupted and unreadable (0x80070570) | MFT entries Windows can no longer read | Close the window, stop looking |
| Disk structure is corrupted and unreadable (0x80070571) | Damage in the partition table or the MFT | Copy it first, repair second |
| Location is not available. The parameter is incorrect. X:\ cannot be accessed. | Structural damage with bad sectors underneath it | Treat the disk as dying |
| Windows: no recognized file system on this drive | Nothing left of the file-system metadata | The file data is still below |
| On a Mac: this disk is not readable by the computer | RAW under another name; the button not to press is Initialize | Press Eject, never Initialize |
Every item gets a case number of its own the day it lands. An engineer then works out what has actually failed and tells you plainly which files have a real chance of coming back and which do not. Only then does a price follow: one figure, fixed, in writing, and it costs you nothing to see it. Nothing is charged until you say yes.
Before anything is repaired the disk is copied sector by sector, and any region that reads badly is logged and left until the end. Damaged structures and dying hardware usually turn up together, so the copy covers you against both at once.
Boot sector, partition table and MFT are all put back on the image, never on your drive, so anything that goes the wrong way can be wound back.
Whatever has happened to the MFT, the contents are still in the same clusters. Each file is lifted out of the image by its signature, and as much of the folder tree goes back as the remaining evidence supports.
No invoice is raised until the full list of recovered files has sat in front of you and you have said go ahead. Your data comes back on media we buy new, posted at our expense, and the job is not closed here until every file has opened on your own machine.
One thing links every repair tool: CHKDSK, First Aid in Disk Utility, whichever free RAW fixer a forum points you at — all of them write to the disk they are supposed to be saving. If the hardware underneath is healthy, that generally does no harm. If it is not, a job that could have come back whole comes back in pieces instead. Waiting a day for an image is all that caution costs.
The lead came out of the socket while a write was still running, and by the next morning Windows had nothing to offer but a format prompt. An image of the whole disk came first. The boot sector and the damaged MFT mirror were then repaired on that image alone. Fifteen years of client work went back with the folders as they had been.
Say no. A format lays a blank file system down on top of the broken one, and the structures that still hold your folder names and dates are the first thing it lands on. Those are what a rebuild works from.
Because it can no longer read the structures that describe the volume. That damage usually sits in the boot sector, the partition table or the MFT. The files themselves are still down there, whole.
It will not even start on a RAW volume, so there is nothing to win. Set against that, if the disk is already tiring, each pass takes more out of it. Repair work belongs on an image, not the original.
Probably, and you are not the first. Pull the cable mid-write and the index ends up describing a state that never finished, while the files it points to sit there intact.
Every extra power-up takes something off a drive that is already going. Leave it switched off and let the free diagnosis say what still reads.