How to Format RAW File System Pen Drive to NTFS/FAT32 in Windows 10 or 11?

RAW file system pen drive issue

"I have some problems with RAW file system. I bought a Kingston pen drive and stored my travel photos. I want to look through these pictures, so I insert the Kinston pen drive into my laptop, but the Windows only shows a message: Disk is not formatted. Besides, the file system of Kingston USB is also changed into RAW, not FAT32 as before. Please help me to overcome this issue, Thanks a lot."

What Is RAW file system?

When you insert your SD card, USB flash drive, pen drive, or external hard drive into your PC, you may receive a note that "disk not formatted or need to format the disc in drive". And if you attempt to use CHKDSK to examine and correct the issue, you may see an additional notice stating, "This is a RAW file system. RAW drives do not support Chkdsk ".

RAW file system is a file system that cannot be recognized by Windows. Windows can read the hard drive, USB pen drive, and SD card with these file systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. On the other hand, if the pen drive was created but not yet initialized, it will also be indicated as RAW file system.

Why RAW file system pen drive issue occurs?

Typically, the RAW file system issue often happens when you remove the pen drive without safely remove. As a result, the file system type information could be missing or the system tables are damaged. Furthermore, virus attacks, power outages, format failure, and bad sectors could also cause the RAW drive. You’ll encounter these problems below when you have a RAW file system pen drive:

1. When you insert the RAW file system pen drive into your computer, you will get a warning: "You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it. Do you want to format it?"

2. The type of file system is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

3. The volume does not contain a recognized file system.

4. The Disk Management shows RAW or no file system type and shows 0 bytes in the RAW drive properties.

5. The drive is not accessible.

These error messages refer to the pen drive having a RAW file system. How to fix it? The best way to repair the USB RAW file system is to format the RAW file system pen drive correctly and efficiently.

How to Format RAW USB Pen Drive in Windows 10/8/7?

Be relaxed, there are two ways to format the RAW file system for the pen drive: CMD and the format raw file system pen drive via disk partition software.

Way 1. Format RAW file system pen drive using CMD

In order to repair RAW file system pen drive, you could use the DiskPart commands to format the RAW pen drive, below are how to format RAW pen drive using CMD.

Step 1. Type cmd in the search box on the desktop. Right-click on it and select Run as administrator to open Command Prompt.  Please type the following CMD orders and press "Enter" after each:

• diskpart
• list disk (According to the list disk information, check which disk is your USB flash drive)
• select disk # (# is the number of your RAW pen drive)
• clean
• create partition primary
• format fs=fat32 (or format fs=ntfs)
• assign

In this way, you can format RAW file system pen drive to FAT32 or NTFS file system, and then access everything stored in the pen drive successfully.

Way 2. Format RAW USB with Free AOMEI Partition Assistant

If you fail to format RAW USB drive with CMD or you just think it is too complicated, you can turn to a free partition manager: AOMEI Partition Assistant. Compared with Command Prompt, this RAW file system pen drive format software is much more powerful, and with an intuitive interface. Therefore, no matter whether you have some basic computer skills or not, you can easily format RAW file system pen drive to NTFS or FAT32 in Windows 11/10/8/7.

In addition, this software also applies to USB flash drives, external hard drives, memory cards, SD cards, etc. Follow the instructions to format RAW file system pen drive easily in Windows 7/8/10/11:

Note: make sure your pen drive’s important data has been restored and backed up. Free download the RAW file system format tool-AOMEI Partition Assistant.

AOMEI Partition Assistant

The Best Windows Disk Partition Manager and PC Optimizer

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

Step 1. Install and launch the program, right-click the RAW file system pen drive that you’re planning to format, hit the Format Partition.

Step 2. Choose NTFS or FAT32 as the File System of pen drive, press OK.

Step 3. Press Apply at the left upper corner and Proceed to format RAW pen drive to NTFS/FAT32.

Final Words

After scanning through this post, you must learn how to format RAW file system pen drive, SD card, memory card, and other hard drives to a recognized file system via Command Prompt or professional RAW file system format software. It is worth mentioning that AOMEI Partition Assistant also permits you to remove write protection for USB drive/SD card, create a second partition on SD card, create bootable media, etc.

In addition, AOMEI Partition Assistant has more advanced features for professional users, like converting dynamic disk to basic, recovering lost data, allocating free space from one partition to another, converting file systems between NTFS and FAT32 without losing data and many more.