Windows 10: 13/01/2019 Windows update formatted my external hard drive to raw

Hello, as title my external 500GB hard drive was converted to RAW after windows 10 security updates on the 13/01/2019, after a lot of searching online trying to find a fix I tried to convert it to NTFS in command prompt but it showed message as already an NTFS hard drive, all other methods want me to format it so I think that's probably just misinformation or my wishful thinking/ignorance.

Disk manager shows it as RAW and if I try to access it it shows error box and a message such as in order to use this disk you have to format it, I also noticed the drive letter has changed from E to F. Another thing I noticed a lot of files which were already installed years ago show installation on the 13/01/2019.

I have used Puran (huge thank you for this awesome free software) to check if I can recover it and I can but at this moment it's impossible as I don't have another hard drive, I tried Google dropbox as a temp. measure but it's really slow it would take two months. What else can I try apart from buying another hard drive? Windows desperately needs a reliable and convenient online back up solution.

:)

 

Raw formatted my external

Thanks, TopGun; however, we need to add one more to the mix!

Mine "went RAW" with Windows 10 Insider Build 10547 when I was trying to create a bootable USB drive. Someone said to format it so I did and that's when things went haywire.

 

Raw formatted my external


Your HD became RAW (Corrupted Master Boot Record) for one of the reasons below:

1. HD is going bad
2. Power Surge
3. You unplug the cable and did not use "Safely Remove" while the HD is performing disk I/O

Download test disk and follow the link below
UPDATED How To Fix: External Disk Drive Suddenly Became RAW

 

saving and viewing files on an external hard drive

Hi Sam,

We appreciate you for being part of Windows 10.

Yes, you may format the external hard drive. Follow the below steps.

• 
  Connect the external hard drive to Windows 10 computer.
  
• 
  Press Windows + E keys on the keyboard to the keyboard to open the file explorer.
  
• 
  Locate the external hard drive on left navigation pane in File explorer.
  
• 
  Right click on the external hard drive and click on
  Format.
  
• 
  Click Start and follow on screen instructions to format the hard drive.
  

I hope the above information helps. Kindly let us know if you need any further assistance with Windows. We are glad to assist you.

Thank you.