I am attempting to set up a new unRAID server for the first time.  I was able to install and format one hard drive without any problems.  I then went to install a second 2 TB hard drive, which was full of data, so that i could transfer some of the data onto the first drive.  UnRAID showed the drive as unformatted, so I moved the drive back to my original PC.  Now it does not show up as a drive and when i go into disk management, it says it only has a 1TB partition and 1TB of unpartitioned space.  What did I do wrong and did I somehow just lose all my data?

I am attempting to set up a new unRAID server for the first time.  I was able to install and format one hard drive without any problems.  I then went to install a second 2 TB hard drive, which was full of data, so that i could transfer some of the data onto the first drive.  UnRAID showed the drive as unformatted, so I moved the drive back to my original PC.  Now it does not show up as a drive and when i go into disk management, it says it only has a 1TB partition and 1TB of unpartitioned space.  What did I do wrong and did I somehow just lose all my data?

You should never had assigned the disk with data to the unRAID array.

 

When you did, unRAID re-write the master-boot-record and partition table on the drive.  You data is still there, but the partition may not point to it, and even if it does, it is now marked in the partition table as a linux type file-system, and not one your PC would recognize.

 

Only way to get to your old data now is with a third party data recovery tool.  (one that will ignore the MBR and partition table)  There are many for Microsoft PCs, although I have no personal experience using any of them.

 

Joe L.

 

Yeah that's kinda what I suspected.  Thanks.