DO NOT FORMAT YOUR DISK. It has been damaged; how easy or even possible to recover your data depends on the degree of damage.
Try your HD in another computer; if it works, make a back-up of your files on another disk.
To understand what RAW format means, try this
http://www.ehow.com/facts_7167186_raw-disk-format_.html
or look for it in Wikipedia.
By searching the internet ("raw disk has data on it"), the first article I found was this
http://html5.litten.com/how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/
which may be of some help.
In that article a Linux system is used to read and modify the disk. There other tools for repairing this type of fault, for example,
http://www.easeus.com/resource/recover-raw-disk.htm
(I do not know if this free:: the information in the article is certainly free though)
Recovering your files will probably mean a lot reading, research and time, but you might be lucky. I recommend reading any article you are going to use through to the end before you start with it.
25.April.2014
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