Encrypted partition/device no longer showing as RAW in Windows Disk Management - expected behavior?

[veryuniquenickname13]

Hi, I wanted to ask whether it is expected behavior that an encrypted non-system partition created with VeraCrypt (including a hidden volume) no longer shows as RAW in Windows Disk Management, but instead shows as a recognized partition without prompting to format.

Setup:

• VeraCrypt 1.26.24
• GPT partition table and partition created on Linux (no filesystem, just a blank partition)
• Outer and hidden volume created via VeraCrypt GUI on Windows 11
• Both volumes mount correctly and data integrity is confirmed

Observation:
In Windows Disk Management the partition shows as "Healthy, Primary Partition" without a filesystem label, and Windows does not prompt to format it. Based on older forum posts and documentation, the expected behavior was that Windows should show an encrypted partition as RAW since it cannot read the contents.

I tested this across multiple discs created in different ways - one 2TB drive where the GPT partition table, the partition itself, and the encryption were all done entirely on Linux, and one 4TB drive where the GPT partition table and partition were created on Linux but the encryption was done via VeraCrypt GUI on Windows 11. In both cases the partition shows as "Healthy, Primary Partition" in Disk Management on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, without any prompt to format and without RAW being shown.

Is this a known behavior change in a recent release, or is there another explanation? I could not find any mention of this in the changelogs.

Thank you.

[idrassi]

Thank you for the detailed report.

This is expected behavior and not a VeraCrypt regression. VeraCrypt doesn't change the partition table when creating a partition-hosted volume or when encrypting a partition in place. In particular, the GPT partition type GUID is preserved: VeraCrypt only writes encrypted data inside the selected partition.

On GPT disks, Windows Disk Management relies heavily on the partition type GUID when deciding how to present a partition. If the partition was created on Linux, it may have been assigned a Linux filesystem GPT type GUID, for example 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4, instead of Microsoft Basic Data EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7. In that case Windows can show the partition simply as Healthy (Primary Partition) without assigning a drive letter, without showing RAW and without prompting to format it.

RAW isn't a VeraCrypt-specific marker. It's a Windows filesystem state shown in situations where Windows exposes a volume and can't recognize the filesystem contents. Whether this appears depends on Windows handling of the partition type, mount manager behavior, drive-letter assignment, and whether the volume is actually probed/opened.
So, the absence of RAW doesn't indicate that the VeraCrypt volume is different or less encrypted.

You can verify the partition type with, for example:

Get-Partition | Select-Object DiskNumber, PartitionNumber, DriveLetter, Type, GptType

or with diskpart:

list disk
select disk <number>
list partition
select partition <number>
detail partition

On Linux, sgdisk -i <partition-number> /dev/<disk> or gdisk -l /dev/<disk> will also show the GPT type.

If someone specifically wants Windows to treat the partition as Microsoft Basic Data, they can change only the GPT partition type GUID, for example with gdisk type code 0700 or Windows diskpart set id=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7. This should be done carefully and doesn't involve formatting the partition.

So the behavior you observe on Windows 10/11 is compatible with normal VeraCrypt behavior and with the GPT type assigned when the partition was created.