I have several SanDisk Extreme microSD cards (red with black) that worked very well in drones and cameras. I used them, then used the adapter to read the files on my notebook.
Suddenly, the cards changed from exFAT32 to RAW, and I can no longer read them on my notebook because it gives me the error “formatting is required.” Even formatting won’t let me do it, nor will I reassign the volume.
Here comes the strangest part: if I insert the card with the adapter into a Sony ZV-E10 camera, I can read the files and download them. I got to this point fortunately, since I didn’t want to go looking for the memory adapter, so I put the cards in the Sony. Anyone else having the RAW formatting problem on their cards?
When a SanDisk microSD suddenly shows up as RAW, it means the exFAT structure got corrupted — that’s why your computer wants to format it. The strange part is your Sony ZV-E10 can still read it because the camera bypasses the corrupted file system and accesses the data directly. Try recovering your files with photo recovery software before reformatting. Once you’ve backed everything up, format the card inside the camera, not on the computer. Also, swap out your adapter - cheap ones often cause this problem.
My recommendations for Photo Recovery tools are: Stellar Photo Recovery, Photorec, and R-Photo.
Given the card file system is mangled, safer is to get a new card and forget about the damaged one. I suggest a USB cable to the camera can gain access to images/video safely.
A RAW drive indicates that the file system of your SD card is either missing or damaged, rendering the data unreadable to your laptop. In this condition, you will get prompt errors like “You need to format the disk”, " formatting is required" or Disk Management will show the drive as RAW.
You may try using software to repair the RAW file system. If the repair process is successful, your disk will work fine. Read also: How to Recover Data From RAW Drive & Fix RAW Drive
That’s actually a classic sign of file system corruption, not a dead card. Your SanDisk Extreme microSD card likely has a damaged partition table or exFAT structure—so Windows sees it as RAW, but your Sony ZV-E10 can still interpret the data using its own firmware.
A few professional tips:
Stop writing to the card to avoid overwriting recoverable data
Back up everything via the camera first (you’re lucky it’s still readable there)
Try reading with a different card reader (adapter failure is common)
Use tools like TestDisk to rebuild the partition, or RAW SD card recovery tools to extract files
If formatting fails even in Disk Management, the controller may be degrading. After recovery, I’d retire those cards—they’re no longer reliable.
