Symptoms of an Exposed Drive/Partition on a Mac

If your hard drive appears as RAW, that means it's not readable by your Mac, likely because it's damaged. The RAW file system is an error that occurs due to a virus infection, power failure, failed formatting, or improper system shutdown. Typically, when you see a RAW hard drive, you might also experience symptoms such as:

    • The file system is displayed as "RAW" • File names contain "strange" characters • You receive a "sector not found" error when accessing files • A message prompts you to format the disk: "The disk is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?"

Generally speaking, to fix RAW partition, you need to rebuild DBR, FAT, MFT, etc and format the drive with a new file system so that the RAW partition can be accessed and used again.

However, we all know that formatting the hard drive will lead to data loss. Therefore, you need to first use a professional Mac RAW recovery tool to retrieve crucial data from the RAW drive. After that, continue to fix the RAW disk by formatting.

Mac RAW Data Recovery Solution

Before you make any attempt to work on the drive, it's advisable to stop using it immediately if the data on the hard disk is of great importance or irreplaceable, and turn to professional RAW recovery software to retrieve files in advance.

Support for multiple file systems and different scan modes makes Data Recovery Wizard for Mac the best Mac data recovery software. With it, you can recover data from Mac hard drive, external drive, memory card, and even undelete files from Mac Trash.

The software is easy to use and secure. You can trust it completely, as it has many users across the world. With just 3 simple steps, you can recover all your lost files from the hard drive on your Mac running 10.15, 10.14, 10.13, 10.12, or lower. Read on to learn how to recover RAW data on Mac.

Step 1: Search for the Lost File

On macOS Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, and the latest Ventura, select the disk location where you want to search for the lost file (it can be your internal HDD/SSD or a removable storage device). Then, click on the “Search Lost Files” button.

Recover Data Step 1

Step 2: Browse the scan results

Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will scan the disk volume you select immediately and display the scan results.

Recover Data Step 2

Step 3. Select the files and recover them

In the scan results, select the files you want to preview and then click the “Recover” button to get them back.

Recover Data Step 3

Read Also: Mac Partition Recovery: How to Recover Deleted or Lost Partitions on macOS/Mac OS X

How to Fix RAW Partition on Mac via Formatting

Now that you have successfully recovered files from RAW disk using the Mac RAW Recovery program, you can try to fix the corrupted RAW partition. To fix the RAW disk, you can format it to any file system supported by Mac, including APFS, HFS+, HFS X, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS.

In this section, we will show you two easy ways to format RAW file system to NTFS/FAT32. These solutions work for formatting a RAW drive on HDD, USB, SD card, or memory card.

1. Format RAW Partition with "Disk Utility"

Step 1: Go to Applications > Utilities, and double-click Disk Utility.

Format USB to FAT32

Step 2: Select your RAW drive or the USB flash drive from the sidebar and click “Erase.”

Step 3: Give the RAW partition a name, choose "MS-DOS (FAT)" as the format, and "Master Boot Record" as the scheme. Click "Erase."

Format USB to FAT32 on Mac with Disk Utility

When it's done, you'll have a blank new drive formatted with the FAT32 file system. You can now use this partition to store data again.

2. Format RAW Drive on Mac via Terminal Command Line

There's a more complicated way to do this by repairing and formatting the RAW partition from the command line in Terminal, but if you're new to Macs, it's best to stick with Disk Utility and its simple click-based interface for formatting.

Step 1: Press cmd + space to open Spotlight search, type in terminal, and hit Enter.

Open Terminal and run the command to format the USB device

Step 2. Type diskutil list to find the damaged RAW drive.

Step 3: Type sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 MBRFormat /dev/disk2.

    • sudo gives you user privileges
    • Diskutil calls the Disk Utility app
    • eraseDisk is the command to format
    • FAT32 sets the file system to FAT32
    • MBRFormat tells Disk Utility to use the Master Boot Record format
    • /dev/disk2 is the location of the external drive

Format USB to FAT32 on Mac with Terminal

Step 4: Wait for the process to finish. You can then run the diskutil list command again to verify that the format was successful.

Conclusions

If you want to recover corrupted RAW files from digital camera, SD card, or hard drive on Mac, Mac RAW Recovery Software is a good choice. It's a professional yet easy-to-use RAW file recovery tool. In addition, this software can also fix corrupted photos and repair damaged MOV/MP4 files on Mac.

It's more useful to prevent the appearance of a RAW drive and avoid the risk of data loss rather than recovering data after a hard drive failure. When using your computer regularly, you can pay attention to the following points:

    - Install and update antivirus software - Safely eject external USB drives - Avoid accidental actions like sudden power loss - Utilize advanced file systems like NTFS - Regularly back up important data

Frequently Asked Questions on Mac RAW Hard Drive Data Recovery (UTF-8)

Below are some common issues related to Mac RAW recovery. If you have any of the following issues, you can find the solutions here.

What is Raw Disk Recovery?

Mac Raw Recovery is a data recovery approach. It helps users recover most lost files from hard drives, SD cards, USB flash drives, or other storage media devices when the hard drive fails or the file system is corrupted.

How to recover original disk?

With the Data Recovery Wizard for Mac tool, you can recover RAW drive in 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Select the RAW hard drive from where you lost data and files, and then click on the "Scan" button.

Step 2: The tool will immediately scan the selected disk volume and display the scanning results in the left pane.

Step 3. Select the files from the scan results and click on the “Recover Now” button to get them back.

Is Mac data recovery free?

The free version of Data Recovery Wizard for Mac allows you to recover up to 2 GB of data for free. It enables you to retrieve deleted or lost photos, videos, Word, Excel, PPT, and other files from all Mac devices and external storage media, such as external HDD/SSD, fusion drives, USB drives, SD cards, CF cards, digital cameras, video players, and more.

What is the best data recovery software for Mac?

One of the best data recovery software for Mac is Data Recovery Wizard. It supports file recovery from deleted files, formatted drives, RAW recovery, partition recovery, virus attacks, and operating system crashes, helping you retrieve your data in these complex situations.

You can also try other best Mac data recovery software:

    • Disk Drill
    • PhotoRec
    • TestDisk
    • Exif Untrasher