Laptop hard drive now shows up as RAW

Laptop hard drive now shows up as RAW #805443 6th Jul 2013 9:58am
Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 5,216 Birkenhead derekdwc OP Forum Veteran
OP derekdwc Forum Veteran Joined: Oct 2008 Posts: 5,216 Birkenhead	I lent my son a laptop and now it doesn't work. I've taken the hitachi 500gb hard drive out and attached it to my desktop pc and the few times it shows in disk management,it has the windows partition as Raw instead of NTFS. I'm not worried about losing data off it, but would like to format it to NTFS and try a fresh instal. Any suggestions as windows suggests formatting but can't do it. Otherwise may need to buy a new smaller size hard drive Last edited by derekdwc; 6th Jul 2013 9:59am.

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Re: Laptop hard drive now shows up as RAW derekdwc #805521 6th Jul 2013 1:32pm
Joined: Nov 2003 Posts: 21,269 Likes: 4 Wirral Mark Wiki Master
Mark Wiki Master Joined: Nov 2003 Posts: 21,269 Likes: 4 Wirral	When you "Format" Drive your telling it how you want the file system to be made on that drive. So you can choose Fat32 or NTFS larger drives choose NTFS +32gb If windows can not do it that means it may have lost the MBR Master Boot Record which reports back the partitions on the drive so you may have to run a program called FDISK to repair / remove and create a new MBR. If your laptop is running vista just put the drive back into the laptop and use your Vista installation disks to re-install it, it should resolve all the problems as the install process begins. Hope that helps. * Repairing the MBR at the installation (Not always given that option) Could bring the Hard Drive back to what it was. If your stuck derek give me a call and i will try and advise you.