Forum Discussion
CHKDSK is not available for raw drives
I’ve been using Windows’ free disk check tool called CHKDSK regularly to check my external drive (My Passport). But recently, when I tried to run it, I got an error message saying: “CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.”
I don’t really understand what this means or why it happened. Can someone please explain it in simple terms? And more importantly, how can I fix this?
2 Replies
Think of your drive (like your external hard drive) as a book. Normally, the book has pages (data) organized in a way your computer understands — that’s called a "file system" (like NTFS or FAT32). When the file system is intact, Windows can read and check the drive easily.
First, convert it to NTFS/FAT32 using DiskPart, then run chkdsk.
