Cause of loss · a drive turned RAW
Say no to Format, and unplug it. Windows offers that box because Format is the only thing it has to offer: hand it a volume it cannot interpret and it suggests replacing the volume. The hardware is usually unharmed and the files are where you left them — what is written across them has stopped adding up. More data goes to people who say yes to that box than to the fault that put it there. Send it in to Reading, the look costs nothing, and the figure starts at £250 + VAT for a card or a stick and £300 + VAT for a single drive.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
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| What you notice | What is likely wrong | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Drive not accessible, and Windows wants to format it first | Windows cannot interpret the file system, so it calls the volume RAW | Say no, then unplug it |
| CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives. | CHKDSK will not start — there is no file system there for it to work on | Unplug it from the PC |
| File or directory corrupted and unreadable (0x80070570) | MFT entries that no longer read | Shut the window and stop browsing |
| Disk structure is corrupted and unreadable (0x80070571) | Damage in the partition table, or in the MFT | Copy it first, repair it afterwards |
| The parameter is incorrect — X:\ not accessible. | Broken structures sitting over failing sectors | Treat it as a hardware fault as well |
| …does not contain a recognized file system | Nothing left that identifies a file system | The contents are still down there |
| The disk you inserted was not readable (macOS) | The same fault, in macOS wording. Whatever else you do, do not Initialize | Disconnect it, and never Initialize |
A case number goes on your device the day it reaches us, and an engineer then finds the real fault — free, and before anything else happens. You are told plainly what will come back and what will not, with one fixed figure in writing beside it. Nothing chargeable starts until you have read that and said yes.
No repair starts until the copy exists — sector by sector, with the slow-reading areas logged and left until last. Damaged structures and a tired mechanism tend to turn up in the same job, and one image covers both.
The copy is where the partition table, the boot sector and the MFT get put back together. Your drive is not touched, and any step that goes badly can be wound back and taken again.
The MFT can be as far gone as you like: file contents stay in the clusters they always occupied. Each one is carved out of the image on the signature its format opens with, and whatever folder structure the remaining records will carry is rebuilt around them.
You see the file list first, then decide. Nothing is invoiced until you have said yes, and on most jobs there is no fee at all if the data does not come back. What we pull off goes onto media bought in for your job, and the postage home is ours. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.
They all share one habit: every one of them — CHKDSK, Disk Utility's First Aid, this month's free RAW repairer off a forum — puts writes onto the disk it is supposedly fixing. Sound hardware underneath, and you get away with it. Failing hardware, and a recovery that could have been complete arrives in pieces instead. An image takes a day; a free diagnosis tells you which sort of disk is in your hand.
Someone caught the cable while the disk was mid-write. By morning Windows had exactly one suggestion: format it. The 4TB was imaged end to end before anything else was touched, and every repair after that went onto the copy — boot sector first, then the damaged copy of the MFT's first records. Not one byte was written back to the original. Fifteen years of client files came home with the folder tree intact.
Turn it down. A format does not clean the disk, it lays a brand-new file system where the damaged one was standing — right on top of the records that hold your folder names, your structure and your dates. A rebuild is put together out of those very records.
It means Windows has lost its grip on the structures that describe the volume: the MFT, or the boot sector, or the partition table. Beneath all three, your files are exactly where they were.
Nothing. On a RAW volume CHKDSK cannot even begin, so it achieves precisely zero, and on worn hardware each repair pass spends a little more of the disk. Work like that belongs on an image, never on the drive you want back.
Very probably, and you are in good company. Pull a cable out mid-write and the index is left half-written, still pointing at files that came to no harm at all.
You pay nothing for the look. What comes back is a list — the files that opened, the ones that did not, and one fixed figure to finish the job. Leave it switched off until you have that in writing.