DiskPart keeps telling me "No volume selected" when trying to format.

uxfq

Alright, so here is the deal. My external SSD suddenly went "RAW" after a random Windows update (thanks, Microsoft). I’ve been trying to fix it all night. Every single guide on the internet told me to use DiskPart.

I open CMD as admin, type diskpart, then list disk, then select disk 1 (that's my drive). So far, so good. It says "Disk 1 is now the selected disk."

But the moment I type format fs=ntfs quick, it slaps me in the face with:

"There is no volume selected. Please select a volume and try again."

WHAT?! I literally just selected the disk! I tried doing it three times, and it keeps giving me the same stupid error. I have important work files on this (well, I guess they are gone now, I just want the drive back). Am I doing something wrong or is my SSD completely dead? Please help, I'm about to throw this thing out the window.

mymm

uxfq You are confusing the storage hierarchy in Windows. DiskPart operates on a strict object model: Disks contain Partitions, and Partitions contain Volumes. >

When you execute select disk 1, you are merely focusing the utility on the physical array. However, the format command is a file-system level operation. It requires a specific logical abstraction—a Volume—to apply the cluster size and Master File Table (MFT). Because your drive turned RAW, the logical mapping might have been corrupted, or you simply didn't shift focus down the hierarchy. Selecting a disk does not automatically inherit selection of its underlying volumes.

fkb

uxfq "I literally just selected the disk!"

Tell me you don't know how partitions work without telling me you don't know how partitions work. That’s like walking into a parking lot, pointing at a random Honda Civic, and yelling "I select this car!" and then wondering why the trunk didn't magically open. You gotta unlock the specific door, my guy.

rht8

uxfq Hey OP, any update on this? Did you try the list volume or the clean method?

Don't get scared off by the walls of text above. Just open your CMD, follow the 5 steps I wrote in #2, and you should be good. If you get an I/O device error during the process, then you can start crying because that means the hardware actually died.

rht8

mymm Bro, you're giving him a computer science lecture when his house is on fire.

OP, chill, your SSD is probably fine. The fix is simple. You selected the disk, but you didn't select the partition/volume inside the disk. Run these commands in order:

list disk

select disk 1 (replace 1 with your actual drive number)

list volume

select volume X (look at the list, find the volume number that matches your SSD's size)

format fs=ntfs quick

If list volume doesn't show anything for that disk because it's completely wiped/RAW, you need to create a partition first. In that case, after select disk 1, type clean, then create partition primary, and then run your format command. Try this and let me know.

7xs4

rht8 Saving this for later. My backup drive did something similar last month and I ended up buying a new one because I thought "RAW" meant it was physically fried. Wish I saw this sooner.

5cnl

rht8 While your practical steps are mostly correct, advising a user to blindly run the clean command on a drive that supposedly contains "important work files" is borderline reckless.

OP stated they had files. Even if a drive shows as RAW, the partition table might just be corrupted while the data sectors remain intact. Running clean zeroizes the sector containing the MBR/GPT structure, making standard data recovery significantly harder for a novice. The absolute first step should always be attempting a raw sector dump or using a tool like TestDisk to reconstruct the partition table, before destructive write operations are initiated.

rht8

5cnl Read the post again, mate. OP literally wrote: "I have important work files on this (well, I guess they are gone now, I just want the drive back)." They already accepted the data loss and just want a working drive.

TestDisk is great if you have 4 hours to waste scanning blocks on a cheap external SSD that might just have a blown controller anyway. If they just want the hardware back online, nuking it with clean is the fastest triage.

mymm

5cnl To expand on the underlying architecture: TestDisk would indeed be the superior choice if the Partition Boot Record (PBR) was the sole point of failure. When Windows flags a drive as "RAW", it signifies that the Operating System's VFS (Virtual File System) layer cannot recognize the file system identifier in the partition table, or the geometry described in the BIOS Parameter Block (BPB) is invalid.

If OP runs list volume and the volume is present but listed as RAW, DiskPart can format it directly after selection. If the volume list is null, the partition metadata is completely gone, necessitating the create partition primary sequence mentioned by #2.

fkb

rht8 "A blown controller anyway." Way to comfort the OP who is already on the verge of tears lmao.

Hey OP, if you follow #2's advice and your CMD window just hangs indefinitely after you type clean, that's the universe telling you it's time to use that SSD as a very expensive paperweight. Windows Update strikes again.

7xs4

mymm Wait, so "RAW" just means Windows is too stupid to read the formatting, not that the data is physically wiped? I always thought RAW meant the chips inside were corrupted. Fascinating.

5cnl

7xs4 Correct. "RAW" is not a file system; it is the absence of a recognized file system. It means the OS can communicate with the storage controller via the NVMe/SATA protocol, but the data structures required to map files to clusters (like the NTFS $MFT or exFAT Allocation Table) are unreadable or missing.

This is why using GUI utilities like diskmgmt.msc often prompts the user with "You need to format the disk before you can use it," which is an incredibly lazy implementation on Microsoft's part that leads to accidental data destruction.

mymm

7xs4 To clarify further for your notes: when a drive becomes RAW due to an interrupted write operation (such as a sudden power loss or a forced reboot during a Windows update), it is frequently just the primary partition table that is corrupted.

Modern GPT (GUID Partition Table) drives keep a backup partition table at the very end of the disk. A proper recovery utility doesn't even need to scan the whole drive; it simply reads the secondary GPT array and restores it to LBA 1. This is why immediate formatting is an unnecessarily destructive recourse.

fkb

5cnl Classic Microsoft.

Error: "Something went wrong."

Fix: "Have you tried deleting everything you love?"

7xs4

5cnl Thanks for the explanation. This thread is turning out to be a goldmine of info. I'm copying all of this into my Notion tech support page.