cant read my hdd with windows and dont want to preclear my hdd losing my stuff how to revert it back?

[Jederek]

i just finished installing unraid and watched the initial setup video and now all seemed good.

i used a new hdd as parity and mounted my 2 old ones i had that are full of files. it took 9 hours to build the array and all seem good but now what?

1- i dont know what to do after that, i thought i could acces the files from my other windows pc but it seem not. how do you use them , should i set a windows virtual machine so i can use that pc like a normal ones?

2- on the main page i see my hdd but they are unmounted, can i mount them while keeping files on it? someone told me i had to preclear them but it wipe the date wich i dont want can i revert it back to use windows normally on it until i buy 1-2 hdd

i tried to put back one of my hdd on my windows pc but i cant see the files on it...

i guess i should have stayed on what i know with windows...

at worst how can i revert my hdd to be able to use it with windows like before

i need help i just want to acces the files.

[Squid]

1 minute ago, Jederek said:

my 2 old ones i had that are full of files.

What was the format of those drives?  unRaid supports XFS, BTRFS, and ReiserFS as data drives

2 minutes ago, Jederek said:

on the main page i see my hdd but they are unmounted, can i mount them while keeping files on it

Probably not one of the aforementioned filesystems, then they will show as unmountable.  Whatever you do do not hit FORMAT.

3 minutes ago, Jederek said:

i tried to put back one of my hdd on my windows pc but i cant see the files on it...

Implies the format was NTFS.  Unfortunately, the first thing unRaid does when it sees a drive assigned to the array is to set the partition start to be compatible with itself.  Presumably, this wasn't how Windows had the partitioning set.  You'll need to run some partition recovery software on your windows box to get the file(s) back

5 minutes ago, Jederek said:

i guess i should have stayed on what i know with windows...

No.  unRaid is the cat's meow.  But, without researching on how to add in drives with existing data, you've just caused some aggravation to yourself.

 

 

Once you've recovered the partition information via a windows utility, what you want to do is (assuming you've never hit the Format button), is to get all the files off of one of the data drives onto another drive (or the second).  Assign the drive as a data drive, format it.  Then install the Unassigned Devices plugin to mount your drive full of data.  Copy the data from the UD mounted drive to the blank drive.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

 

[Jederek]

i never saw the format button until someone told me so im safe on this side.

the format was NTFS since it was windows , im trying to revert it back to that or to a partition system that windows can read to get the date until i receive my new hdds

[Squid]

You're not the first.  Hopefully @limetech will fix this behaviour on a future release.

[JorgeB]

TestDisk should be able to fix the partition table of your disks, it's been used successfully by many users in similar situations.

[Jederek]

3 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

TestDisk should be able to fix the partition table of your disks, it's been used successfully by many users in similar situations.

thx ill try