If the shit'+ hits the fan, it usually does it at the wrong time.

My 1 TB Samsung drive starts to make huge problems. I made a W 10 upgrade for a friend and was using some programs on this drive.

Now I can't access it anymore and the file system has changed from NTFS to RAW. Is it possible that a virus did that? Under disk managment it shows a healthy partition, the right size, but the RAW format that can't be read by my system.

I've tried another PC, the same problem. I just found out that I have to go to work tomorrow and it would be very sad to lose all my stuff I've got on it.

Any advice would be deeply appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance.

The first thing I would do if the files are really important is to make a copy of the content to another drive. Then I'd try some software for file recovery to try to access the files and repair the partition. You might be safe just trying the recovery on the original drive, but I guess it all boils down to how eager you are to save the files.

The first thing I would do if the files are really important is to make a copy of the content to another drive. Then I'd try some software for file recovery to try to access the files and repair the partition. You might be safe just trying the recovery on the original drive, but I guess it all boils down to how eager you are to save the files.

Thanks to the two buffaloes. I had to Google and found something fantastic: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3036948/external-hard-drive-samsung-1tb-raw.html

I'm using this program now, right now it's doing the first step what the guy's on about.

Inserting an Index entry to bla bla bla.....it seems to work ( at least the first step. Thanks a lot for taking the time.

Some "less than helpful" posts have been removed.

Some "less than helpful" posts have been removed.

Gotta say thanks a lot to you for your "great tip."

I finally did the fix and the HD is back, much better than i could access it before. It started that PC's, but never my notebook ( old timer Dell) couldn't read the disc and i had to connect it several times.

These problems are gone and the MTPW is such a fantastic program that helped me to save all my stuff. Most importantly my photos from the last 15 years made in Lieland.

If I were you I'd buy another external drive and copy the files over, then delete/recreate the partitions and format the old drive.

Then run dskchk from a cmd prompt to check the disk.

EDIT: just in case there is something fundamentally wrong with the old drive.

Then copy your files back to the old drive.

At the end you'll have two copies of your important files. Keep one of the disks off site if you can.

If I were you I'd buy another external drive and copy the files over, then delete/recreate the partitions and format the old drive.

Then run dskchk from a cmd prompt to check the disk.

EDIT: just in case there is something fundamentally wrong with the old drive.

Then copy your files back to the old drive.

At the end you'll have two copies of your important files. Keep one of the disks off site if you can.

Thanks a lot for this great advice. I'm just wondering if a virus ( and the PC I upgraded had plenty of them, could have done the format change.

It's always good to have some important stuff twice. Also backups of two machines.

That error I think can occur if you unplug the drive without safely removing it first. I suspect the master file table was corrupt and the software you had restored from other copies of the MFT stored on the disk. Bit vague here without reading the NTFS documentation...