New Laptop Hdd-Raw format issue

Hello respectable forum members

As the topic states i just bought a new WD blue for my laptop with ailing hdd.I formatted it via sata bridge on another system and installed it on my laptop.The windows 8.1 installer failed to recognize partitions and was displaying raw format with 465 GB of unformatted data.I thought must be a glitch so formatted it via 8.1 installer and it worked.

Now i wanted to transfer data from another pc.Took out the drive and tried running it via sata bridge but got raw format.Tried it on 2 systems and got same raw status,but in my laptop the data shows fine.WHat could be the possible cause and can it be fixed via any means?

Posting HD sentined SMART data for reference







The hard disk is brand new and under warranty.If its a hardware fault i can rma it.

Moving drives around can cause issues and how the drive is being handled is important. I find it best to have a USB External drive or portable drive to copy data to for use on multiple computers and also good for archiving files. If the data is not large could get a USB Thumb/Flash drive up to 64GB or maybe larger to do it but I wouldn't use it for archiving. I use a WDC Passport 750GB drive and 32GB Thumb/Flash drive for such purposes.

Hello devilskreed ,

I suspect the SATA bridge that your using to be causing the issue. What is the model that you are using? As Berton suggested using an external drive for transferring data between different systems is a lot safer than moving your OS drive. But if you absolutely don't have another choice you could try connecting the drive using SATA or a different SATA to USB bridge/external enclosure/ dock. Just make sure you have backup of all the important data that is stored on this drive. Just in case.

Hope that helps.

Yes i do have a WD Passport but it has consumed the 1TB space..I will try to manage my data through external drive.WHat i want to know is that the drive is fine right?

I tried the bridge on another laptop HDD and it worked fine.But this drive goes raw on other systems.

devilskreed said:

WHat i want to know is that the drive is fine right?

I tried the bridge on another laptop HDD and it worked fine.But this drive goes raw on other systems.

It may or may not be fine, I've seen a drive get converted to RAW by infections such as a boot sector virus but still work after a 'fix'. Most times the only 'fix' is to delete the partition and recreate them but there may be a software on the 'net that can convert. It doesn't go RAW on other systems, it was changed to RAW, usually before being removed from the computer, and shows as its current formatting on any other computers. There's no guarantee data won't be lost.

The PC drive you took out : Manufacturer, Model No, Capacity ?

SATA bridge + that PC drive on your laptop : You are able to read fine. Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management.

The same SATA bridge + the same PC drive : Shows as RAW on another System. Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management. Also tell us the running OS on this system.