NTFS from RAW

[3way]

My HD locked up and is now in RAW format instead of NTFS.  This is a secondary HD and not my boot-up drive.  This happened to me a long time ago (about a year) and I found an MS DOS command that would check out my HD and put it back to NTFS.  The commands are not chkdsk or scandisk ... these do not work.  What are other commands I can use to check the bad HD out and possibly get it back to NTFS without reformatting it?

[patio]

RAW is not a good sign.
It is most commonly caused by a power spike or an external drive being unplugged before using the safely remove hardware tool.
There is no DOS command that will get this back to normal other than FDisk which will ERASE all the data and allow you to format and use the drive again.

You could try running chkdsk /r from a command prompt but usually this is an excersise in futility.
Best bet is to visit a Freeware site like sourceforge and read up on some NTFS data recovery programs.

You have about a 1 in 5 chance of retrieving all your data...

[BC_Programmer]

1 in 5 is probably a bit optimistic isn't it? I personally had this problem about a year ago. happened when I sent a firmware upgrade for my CD burner to my third HD(yes it was an accident). long story short, it used to be 4GB, now the BIOS only recognizes 2GB, and my burner died (no light or anything on boot, door won't open, etc..). and no, I did not recover any data. I can't remember the details, it was so long ago. I didn't fix it though, so the details would just add fluff anyway. But hey! the drive works fine now after formatting!

[patio]

I'm an optimistic person by nature...

[BC_Programmer]

Well then call me a pessimist.