You should only work with the drive in Disk Management or a 3rd party Partitioning app, not the TV.
a RAW drive means that either a power surge or power event has taken place, or the USB controller inside the enclosure is failing. When plugging into a desktop computer, plug in the Back USB ports as the front USB ports are weaker.
If you don't want any files on the drive, go to Disk Management and Delete all the partitions on the drive until it is all Unallocated Space.
Right click the Unallocated Space and create a new Simple Volume (partition) Most TV's only recognize drives formatted FAT32, so try that. If any of your files are larger then 4GB you will not be able to save them to the drive unless you Format the drive NTFS, if your TV accepts that.

 

Thanks for your help!

I deleted the volume, and created a simple NTFS volume. I can add and retrieve files, but on the System > Storage > Disks & volumes page, it still says "(No label) RAW". When I eject it safely, the drive letter remains in my computer, but the label disappears. On re-connection, I have to assign it a new drive letter to view the contents.

I just can't tell if the drive is failing in some significant way. If it is, that's not a huge issue. I'm just trying to explore any simple repair options, the possibility of using as is, or whether I should chuck it.

 

Download Crystal Disk Info, and/or DiskGenius in my signature.
Select your WD Disk and view the SMART Information. If it says the drive is anything less than Good, it needs to be replaced.

 

Thanks for the recommendation. I viewed the SMART information for the disk, and it said the health status was GOOD. I also ran the Bad Sector Verification, and the vast majority were Excellent. The rest were Good.

Unless you or someone else has another idea how to change it from RAW to "labelled", I guess I'll just use the HDD as is and assign a drive letter whenever I plug it into my computer.

 

You can DM our resident Hard Drive Expert @fzabkar. Just Mentioning his name in this thread will alert him next time he logs in as well.

 

I'm no expert, but RAW means that Windows either doesn't recognise the file system, or has found some fault in the file system's metadata. I don't understand why assigning a drive letter makes the problem go away, but it would appear that the TV is somehow corrupting the metadata.

I would run CHKDSK in readonly mode after allowing the TV to do whatever it does. It may be that Windows will refuse to run CHKDSK against a RAW volume, but we won't know until you try.

The next step would be to save a copy of the metadata, especially the boot sector, using DMDE (the free version should be sufficient). Then compare the metadata before and after reassigning a drive letter. This will tell us exactly what is happening. If you get to this point, let us know and I'll try to walk you through DMDE.

About DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery Software)

 

I can't say for current TV's but in the past a lot of TV's were being controlled by LINUX systems and later with Android. I remember at one time having to install an app on my PC to allow me to surf my mobile phone and Linux drive. And YES, until I put the app Windows wouldn't recognise the drive.

If your TV system is reformatting your drive so that it is compatible with its OS, then obviously it will also lose the drive letter.

Lets start off by finding out what TV you are attaching it to, so we can research what the TV is doing when it finds a new hard drive installed.

Please supply TV brand name and model. I have checked through the posts and don't find it anywhere.

In the meantime. After recording your next program, try booting into LINUX distro, one that can be booted from usb or dvd, and attach the drive to see if the recorded material can be seen. Most Linux distros are a free download and allow one to boot without installing.