HDD being reported as RAW format?

[Ch3m1c4L]

My laptop has BSOD'd a few time srecently on boot up, it doesnt do ti while playing Age of Conan or COD 4 or something. I decided I wanted to do a check disk before I bother to run a mem test etc. In Vista I ran CMD and set it to do a chkdsk /b on all drives and it reported they were NTFS and in use etc so I set them to be done on next boot up. Heres the weird bit. It bootsa up and goes to do the check disk, but it says the file systems are RAW and auto check disk is not available for RAW data formats. I haven't got round to trying it from the vista CD yet as its not really causing issues (3 BSOD's in a month) so im not in a rush to fix it. Temps all seem fine and any crashes I have experienced while actually using the laptop can be atributed to the game/software. These BSOD's only happen on boot up, and only somtimes. They vary between a few different ones, and they point to a bad sector or two on the HDD or a RAM issue, so i dont need help with that, just with the fact that the file system is being reported as RAW? when in windows its definately showing as NTFS and I formatted both drives in NTFS when i got the laptop

Specs:
Vista business SP1 32bit
Dell Vostro 1700
17" 1440 screen
Core 2 duo 2.2Ghz
Nvidia 8600M 256MB (latest nvidia drivers with hacked ini file)
3GB DDR 667Mhz in dual channel
2 x 160GB 5400 drives (not in raid)

 

[linktoinsanity]

It sounds as if your hard disk is on it's way out and getting corrupted. Try running disk manager and make sure there isn't part of your hard drive that is unallocated (as that might explain the RAW bit). If it is, then either format it as a third drive or expand it on one of your current existing ones (whichever one it is on).

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

its not anything with bits not being formatted. chkdsk is reporting the correct drives/drive letters with the right sizes, there is none unallocated. it is doing this on 2 drives (3 partitions). both were new in feb.