Cause of loss · a volume reading RAW
Refuse the format, and then cut the power. Windows keeps putting that box in front of you because it has nothing else to put there: the moment a volume stops parsing, replacing it is the only repair Windows knows. Underneath, the hardware is usually fine and the files sit undisturbed — it is the bookkeeping written over the top of them that has stopped adding up. Saying yes to that prompt loses more work than the original fault ever did. Cards and sticks begin at £250 + VAT and one drive at £300 + VAT; nothing is charged for the assessment ahead of either; and on most jobs there is no bill where the data cannot be read back.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
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| How it shows itself | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| The drive will not open, and Windows suggests formatting it | The file system will no longer parse, so Windows falls back on calling it RAW | Shut it down, then pull the cable |
| Windows: CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives | No file system is left for CHKDSK to act on, so it declines to run | Off the PC, and unplugged |
| Error 0x80070570 — file or directory corrupted and unreadable | MFT entries that will not read back any more | Close it, and open no more folders |
| Error 0x80070571 — disk structure corrupted and unreadable | The partition table damaged, or the MFT | Image first, then mend |
| X:\ not accessible, the parameter is incorrect | Damaged structures sitting on top of sectors that are failing | Expect a hardware fault as well |
| A message that it does not contain a recognized file system | Nothing identifiable as a file system is left in place | Your files are where they were |
| macOS: not readable by this computer | The same fault in Apple's wording. Whatever else, decline Initialize | Pull it out, and refuse Initialize |
A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
Nothing is mended until a copy exists, made sector by sector, with the slow regions marked and held back to the end. A worn mechanism and a damaged structure tend to turn up together, and one image copes with both.
Boot sector, partition map and MFT go back together on the image, one at a time. No write ever reaches your own disk, and a step that goes badly can simply be undone and attempted afresh.
An MFT can be far gone and the contents of a file will still be lying in the same clusters as ever. Each is recovered from the image by the signature its own format begins with, then set back into whatever tree the surviving records will still support.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.
One habit runs through all of them: CHKDSK, First Aid over in Disk Utility, whatever RAW repairer a forum happens to be recommending this month — every one of them writes onto the disk it is supposed to be mending. Where the hardware beneath is sound, no harm done. Where the hardware is failing, a job that would have come home whole comes home partial. Imaging takes a day. The free assessment says which of the two you have, and asking costs you nothing.
The cable was caught mid-write, and by morning Windows had nothing to suggest but a format. First move was an end-to-end image of the 4TB; from then on every repair was made against that copy — the boot sector to begin with, and after that the MFT's damaged mirror. The original was never touched by a write. Client files stretching back fifteen years returned with the folder tree intact.
No. Formatting mends nothing at all. A fresh file system gets written across the damaged one, and the ground it lands on is exactly where the folder names, the dates and the shape of the tree are recorded. Take those away and a rebuild has no material to work with.
Only this: the structures that describe the volume can no longer be read. Perhaps the MFT. Perhaps the boot sector, or the partition table, or two of them at once. What those structures describe has not moved a sector.
On a RAW volume it does not even start, so there is no gain available. There is a cost, though. Every repair pass over a worn disk spends a further part of whatever it has left. That kind of work belongs on an image.
Quite possibly. It is among the more usual routes to this page: a write cut off part way leaves the index unfinished, still describing files the interruption never went near.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.