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20 June 2019  Amanda J. Brook  Senior Product Manager
Last update by Olivia Brown at 20 June 2019

Summary
When you were trying to run the CHKDSK command to fix the SD card, the Windows system reminded you that “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives” and stopped fixing this RAW device. Why and how for this situation?



About “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives”

When we are trying to fix the SD card, the CHKDSK command cannot work for the RAW file system and the operating system will tell you that “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives”.
chkdsk is not available for raw drives or it cannot be used in a raw drive
As we know, the RAW drive cannot be accessible or readable. But, why it becomes RAW? Here are some common scenarios of a RAW drive:

  • The SD card is not formatted.
  • The file system cannot be supported by the operating system.
  • There exists too many error or bad blocks in the SD card.
  • The damaged file system contains logic faults.
The RAW file system cannot be recognized in Window or Mac OS, so the data in it cannot be read. Therefore, if you want to keep the intact data, you should recover them before fixing the SD card.
raw drives are not available with chkdsk

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① Download and install Renee Undeleter. Then, connect the SD card to your PC.
② Launch the software and select one of the scan modes. In this example, we select [Fast Partition Scan].
data recovery in renee undeleter
③ Select the target SD card and click [Next].
④ Select [Fast Scan] or [Deep Scan]. The former one can save time while the latter one can scan the disk thoroughly.
select fast scan mode in renee undeleter
⑤ Select the file types. If you are not sure, please select [Default Settings].
select file types to recover
⑥ Wait for scanning. Then, check the target files and click [Recover].
select the target files to recover in fast partition scan
⑦ Select a folder and click [Recover] to save the data.
select the destination to save the recovered files in renee undeleter to restore sd card to full capacity
Note!Don’t save the recovered data into the SD card for fear that the following steps will clear the data. Beside, Renee Undeleter can recover the damaged SD card. Click for “How to Fix and Recover Corrupted SD Card”.

Fix SD Card that Gets “CHKDSK is not available for raw drives”

If the file system is damaged or corrupted, the SD card will be RAW. Then, the CHKDSK command is unable to fix the RAW SD card. Therefore, we should switch to the other ways.

Format Again

① Right-click at the Start menu and select [Disk Management].
open windows disk management
② Right-click at the target SD card and select [Format].
right click to select format sd card in disk management
③ Select the target file system and check [Perform a quick format]. Then, click [OK].
select file system in sd card formatting if sd card is unexpectedly removed
④ The Windows system will warn you that the data saved on the SD card are going to be erased. Click [OK] to continue and wait for formatting.
click ok to format sd card

Fix by Diskpart Command

① Search [cmd].
search cmd to open command prompt
② Right-click at [Command Prompt] and select [Run as administrator].
run command prompt as administrator in start menu
③ Type and press Enter to run the command [diskpart]. Then, type [list disk] to list all the available drives in PC.
type and list disks in command prompt
④ Type [select disk n]. “n” is the name of the target disk shown on the last step.
⑤ Type and run the command [clean]. Then, the target disk will be erased.
select and erase the target disk in command prompt
⑥ Type [create partition primary] to create a partition. Then, type [active] to mark it as the active partition.
create active partition for the disk in command prompt
⑦ Finally, type [format fs=FAT32 quick] to format the SD card. “fs=” follows the target file system.
format a file system when chkdsk is not available for raw drives
It is believed that you follow these steps to format the SD card and create a new partition. At that time, the SD card will not be RAW but be FAT32, NTFS and the other file systems you choose.