hard disk format showing as RAW??

[Not Even Me]

XP Home SP2 on an Acer P4-2.8Ghz/512MB with onboard video/lan/sound.
I thought RAW was a print format, and when I try to run chkdsk it says
autocheck not available for the RAW format.
In the disk properties it shows as FAT32.
Ant idea how to correct it?

 

[Mark Adams]

XP Home SP2 on an Acer P4-2.8Ghz/512MB with onboard video/lan/sound.
I thought RAW was a print format, and when I try to run chkdsk it says
autocheck not available for the RAW format.
In the disk properties it shows as FAT32.
Ant idea how to correct it?

There doesn't seem to be any good recovery for this. From what I have read,
you may be able to copy your data off to external media by using a Knoppix
disk. Download the disk checking utilities from the maker of your hard drive
and check the disk. If it fails the test, replace the drive. If it passes,
reformat the drive, reinstall Windows and your applications and copy your
data back.

 

[Not Even Me]

Thanks for the answer.
This machine was brought to me by a friend, it was spontaneously rebooting.
I managed to get AV and Anti-spyware software installed and run scans.
AVG 'only' found 89 trojans & viruses.
Then Malwarebytes found 59 infected files and Spybot SD found another 27
'problems' not including cookies.
The machine is running better and 'almost' normal. But it keeps generating
errors about corrupted files when you try to open a program; but then the
program opens and runs.
I think I will try to burn his files to DVD/CD since the machine has a
burner. If all else fails, my USB flash drive seems to work with it.