I have 2 external drives, one used as a backup destination for WHS2011 and the other for WSS2008R2E. These systems use block mode access to run backup and can only work with DAS/iSCSI drives. These test systems are finished with and I want to use the drives elswhere but when I plug them into a Windows 7 PC they show most of the disk as a RAW format partition and Windows brings up a message that the drives need formatting. This fails and if I use Disk Manager to remove the partition I get another message "Access Denied - Unable to find the file specified". What has WinSvr 2008 backup done to these drives and how do I recover them?25 years of loving (and too often hating) everything Microsoft.

Hi, > I have 2 external drives, one used as a backup destination for WHS2011 and the other for WSS2008R2E. Whats the partition type of these two external drives in OS WHS 2011 and WSS2008R2E? Are there all NTFS partitions? How many partitions do they have? How many primary partitions and how many extend partitions? Its better if you can provide Disk Management screen capture of these two drives. And if it is a disk/data recovery related issue, due to the complexity of this kind of issues and to avoid possible data losing risk, it is highly recommended that you contact some professional data recovery companies or your hard disk manufacturer for further recovery. For more information please refer to following articles: Program Cannot Access a Raw Partition on Your Computer's Hard Disk http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822653 Windows 7- Can not convert RAW Volume file to NTFS http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-GB/w7itprogeneral/thread/ae646675-dbbe-40c7-b496-71f136b204a5 What is this Raw File System http://blogs.technet.com/b/ganand/archive/2008/02/22/what-is-this-raw-file-system.aspx NTFS Partition Showing Raw / Inaccessible Solved http://securenw.blogspot.com/2009/08/ntfs-partition-showing-raw-inaccessible.html Hope this helps! TechNet Subscriber Support If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here.Lawrence TechNet Community Support

As I have already said both of these disk display one partition as being "RAW" format, curiously both having 19Mb unallocated space at the end of the disk. This is not a data recovery issue, I just want to be able to re-use the disks themselves for another purpose. The backups don't contain live data but were used to demonstrate and prove the backup solutions provided with the operating system. They are two completely separate external disks ostensibly used for the same purpose i.e. backup although one was a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials backup destination and the other for Windows Home Server 2011. These operating systems use Direct Access Storage in block mode for backup and when installed are not assigned a drive letter. It a little beyond coincidence that 2 independant external disks used on 2 different systems albeit the same O/S should exhibit exactly the same problem so what has Windows 2008 R2 done to these disks? To be honest it is not even the prospect of losing these disks that is the major issue but more that how can the O/S do this damage? I have always argued that a good backup procedure is a two stage process, make sure you run backups and equally important make sure you can use the backups when needed. This fails to meet those requirements. 25 years of loving (and too often hating) everything Microsoft.

Hi, > These operating systems use Direct Access Storage in block mode for backup and when installed are not > assigned a drive letter. To help troubleshoot this issue, we need to make clear some questions. Which brand are these two external Direct Access Storage devices? How you connect them to your server, SAS cables? If you didnt assign drive letter for them in your Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials and Windows Home Server 2011, can you or your backup software access these them and whats their partitions type? Which backup software do you use? Please give us feedback for further troubleshooting. TechNet Subscriber Support If you are TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback here. Lawrence TechNet Community Support

Hi, I would like to confirm what is the current situation? Have you resolved the problem? If there is anything that we can do for you, please do not hesitate to let us know, and we will be happy to help. Lawrence TechNet Community Support