I have a semi-old Sony Vaio PCV-RX590G with a fairly new Maxtor hard drive with Windows Home Edition on my C drive. About a week and a half ago, i restarted my computer manually (just held the button till it turned off) and suddenly it could not boot up. My computer told me that windows was improperly shut down and that i had to choose which mode to start-up in. The options were safe mode, safe mode with dos, safe mode with networking, normal mode, and revert to last known working configuration. I chose normal mode and my computer could only make it to the Windows XP logo (showing that it was loading) before it restart itself where it then came up with the same message. This time, i clicked on safe mode. It showed that all the files necessary for safe mode were loading and once they were all listed at the black dos screen, my computer restarted itself. This time i shut it down manually and unplugged it and gave it a little time, thinking it might just need a refresh. It ended up giving me the same screen and after i had clicked on every possible mode to load in, i realized that something had gone completely wrong. (This is where i started flipping out). I wasnt sure wat to do and after a long time thinking, i realized that i could try to recover windows using the recovery tool so i popped in the system recovery disk that came with my computer. When i popped it in, the disk could not run, telling me that C drive was not formatted. It asked me if i wanted to format and i hit no (because i did not want to lose the files on C). After long thought, i realized that C did not have that many important files so i decided to click yes. After it was done, it told me that D was not formatted either. (Here is where i freaked out). I hit no when it asked me to format and tried booting up but it still did not work. I figured, ok well it looks like ill jsut have to start C from scratch with windows. Unfortunately, my Vaio came with windows already on it so i had no windows cd. I borrowed it from a friend and after a long search for a valid key, i finally got it installed onto my C drive. After i set everything up and finally got my comp up and running, it was about a week later than my original problem. (about 2 or 3 days ago). So i start getting my programs back and everything and just to make sure my D stuff is all there, i start browsing through my computer. Just when i thought my problems had ended it got worse. I clicked on D drive in My Computer and the first thing it says is: "D Drive is Not Formatted. Would you like to format it now?" I then recall ed the original time i popped in my recovery disk, when it told me that C nor D were formatted. Heres where i got even more pissed!! After talking to smarter people, they recommended i try using a boot diskette to see if D is even out there. I did it and it told me it couldnt find D/ that it was an invalid destination. So now I cant access D drive and Windows is telling me it cant even find it. I even tried dskchk but no luck. It just tells me that it is a RAW file sytem. My Question is...Is there any hope?!!? I dont want to just reformat my whole D drive. I have 65 gigs of priceless pictures of several family vacations and other irreplaceable things. I do not want to reformat. I know there must be some way to go in through the bak and recover my files, or at least transfer them to another hrad drive and then reformat. Can someone PLEASE PLEASE HELP?? ANYONE please. If have ANY input on this please reply! I need your help!!!

Do a search at the top of the page for 'RAW'. You will find a bunch of people who have run into that 'RAW' problem. It seems to be a Operating System bug. You probably will not find a fix there. If you do find a fix, please post it.

You may want to try a program called Easy Recovery Professional. It has a "raw" recovery option that may help. It is a damn good program that has saved my butt on more than a few ocassions. Hope this helps, Sandman

Same happend to me once. I used getdataback from runtime.org(top right,orange square) It recovered almost everything. Tt Lanfire MSI K8N Diamond AMD64 3000+'Venice' 1gb pc4400 OCZ Powerstream 520w 6600GT WDCaviar 160gb sata x2 ;~}