[SOLVED] Old IDE HDD shows as "RAW" and wants to format partition

806 Views 8 Replies 2 Participants Last post by Sebons, Apr 16, 2013

Sebons

Discussion Starter · Apr 16, 2013

Hello techies,

I just bought an USB to IDE/SATA connector for fun and decided to rift through a couple of my old drives. The one I'm looking at now (MAXTOR DiamondMax plus 9 ATA/133 drive), however, doesn't allow me to access one of it's partitions. (I'm on Windows 7 btw)

It has two partitions, one with the system and the other where I must have kept anything else. The system partition opens fine, but the H: demands that I format the drive. In DiskManagement it comes up as RAW filetype.

I'm not tech savvy or anything, but I think the problem has to do with the drive being set to MBR (Master boot)?

Is there anything I can do to make Windows 7 recognize the file system without formatting the drive? I don't believe that the drive is malfunctioning.

Kind regards,
Sebastian

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Sebons

Discussion Starter · #3 · Apr 16, 2013

Re: Old IDE HDD shows as "RAW" and wants to format partition

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I installed Partition Mount and Find and searched the drive, but it only found the system drive. I tried Intelligent Scan and Normal Scan, and have started a Thorough Scan, but it's been sitting at 0% for about 15-20 minutes.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Seb

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Sebons

Discussion Starter · #5 · Apr 16, 2013

Re: Old IDE HDD shows as "RAW" and wants to format partition

Sorry, I misspoke. It sees the external HDD, but it only found the system partition when scanning (Used to be a main drive, with a partition for system and one for random junk).

It's a laptop. I don't know if the USB connection is the problem, but the drive is recognized by the computer.

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Sebons

Discussion Starter · #7 · Apr 16, 2013

Re: Old IDE HDD shows as "RAW" and wants to format partition

Doing that now.

The estimated time is now at 10 hours, and keeps rising. Can I count on the calculated ET or is it just having trouble calculating? If so I'll have to postpone this.

But, I did stop the scan prior to the one I'm doing now, and I was able to listen to a few audio files that definitely wouldn't be located in the system partition, so that's a good sign, right?

Thank you for your help so far.

Seb.

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Sebons

Discussion Starter · #9 · Apr 16, 2013

Re: Old IDE HDD shows as "RAW" and wants to format partition

You know what, this is too much effort for not looking for anything specific. :smile:

I'm only looking at these old drives for fun, to see if there's anything peculiar or memorable there, and I was convinced that it was just a compatibility error between Win 7 and the old drive being acting as a master boot record.

The half(ish) hour scan did give me a handful of audio and image files, but it's not really worth it if this is the only method.

Thank you for your time, though!

Seb

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