What is a .RAW.XXX file?
A .RAW.XXX file is a special kind of computer file that is used by a program called Dolphin. Dolphin is a software that lets you play games from video game consoles on your computer, making it act like those consoles. The ".RAW.XXX" part of the file name tells you that this file is a virtual SD card, which is like a small digital storage card you might use in a camera or phone, but it's for the Dolphin program instead.
When you're playing a game using Dolphin, and you save your game progress, Dolphin saves that information onto a virtual SD card. While it's saving, it creates a file with the extension .RAW.XXX. This means the file is an in-process or ongoing save that hasn't finished yet. Normally, these files are named something like "sd.raw.xxx," where "xxx" can be any combination of numbers or letters that Dolphin uses to keep track of different save processes.
You might see a .RAW.XXX file if you look in the folder where Dolphin saves its files while a game is saving. However, you don't need to open these files yourself. Once Dolphin has finished saving the game data, it will automatically handle these files, usually by changing them to a standard format that it can use later to load your game progress.
If you ever do need to open a .RAW.XXX file for some reason, the only program that can properly handle it is Dolphin itself. Other programs won't understand the special format used by Dolphin for its virtual SD cards. So, if you're using Dolphin and see these files, it's best to let Dolphin manage them as it needs to.
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