computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, the term raw disk, often referred to as raw, is used to refer to

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

access at a raw, binary level, beneath the file system level, and using partition data at the MBR. A notable example is in the context of

platform virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of Virtual machine, virtual machines, Operating system, operating systems, processes or containers. Vir ...

, and a feature of certain virtualization software is the ability to access a hard disk at the raw level. Virtualization software may typically function via the usage of a

virtual drive Virtual disk and virtual drive are software components that emulate an actual disk storage device. Virtual disks and virtual drives are common components of virtual machines in hardware virtualization, but they are also widely used for various pu ...

format like OVF, but some users may want the virtualization software to be able to run an operating system that has been installed on another disk or disk partition. In order to do this, the virtualization software must allow raw disk access to that disk or disk partition, and then allow that entire operating system to boot within the virtualization window.

File system

RAW file system indicates a state of your hard drive which has no or unknown file system. A disk or drive with a RAW file system is also known as RAW disk or RAW drive. When a hard drive or external storage device is shown as RAW, it could be: * The file system of the drive is missing or damaged * The RAW drive has not been formatted with a file system * The current file system of the storage medium is not recognized by the computer

References

Hard disk drives Virtualization software {{computing-stub