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Hi there! My Seagate External Hard Disk ( Bought 2 and a half years ago) started showing RAW file system about 10 days ago. Windows 7 would also display the " You need to format the disk in drive X" messages every time I plugged it then. I thought that all my data had been lost, however the files could be listed. I bought another hard disk and manged to recover all my 450 GB worth data without any failures. Also the drive is spinning smoothly without any clicks. Now that I have recovered all my data, I want to know how to repair the drive so that it could be workable again.

Things I have performed already:

I used the advanced options and under that, the boot option. It read as:

Boot Sector
Status : OK

Backup boot sector
ntfs_boot_sector: Can't read backup boot sector.
Status : Bad

Sectors are not identical.

A valid NTFS Boot Sector must be present in order to access any data; even if the partition is not bootable.

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I also have three options:
1.Org. BS
2.Rebuild BS
3.Dump

Do I have use any of these three options or will my disk be repaired using the Analyze function. If so, please guide me through it. Also if I must post any logs please tell me.

Thanks.

Your boot sector is Ok but your backup of the boot sector not.
Repairing a backup of the boot sector caused sometimes problems.
File system didn't list any data afterwards.
That's why I don't recommend to use Org BS to copy your boot sector over its backup.
If you've already copied your data you can have a try to repair your file system using:
chkdsk driveletter: /r
You should run it within a command prompt with admin rights.

Fiona

Sorry for the late reply but I tried it out as you mentioned and it worked! Thanks a lot for your help.

Hello,
Could you explain a little bit how you recovery you data.
I am facing a similar situation:

ask for format when plugin to Win7 PC
the dive file system is Raw

Using TestDisk quick search no partition appear, no file list

Thank you very much for your reply in advance!

Run TestDisk, select the physical disk, in the Advanced menu, select your partition, Boot, use BackupBS if available, otherwise try RebuildBS, List and if you can see your files, choose Write, confirm, Quit.
Good luck