Question Reading files from 'Windows Server' hard drives in Windows 10 ?

[Digital~Dreams]

A neighbour had an old Dell PC running 'Windows Server'. The two hard drives have been passed to me.

Yet connecting them to my Windows10 PC one by one it can see the drives and partitions but all options other than Erase are greyed out. No drive letters, can't assign drive letters and nothing showing in Windows Explorer.

How am I going to extract the files ?

 

[BFG-9000]

Assuming they are not RAID members, ReFS only works in Windows 10 Enterprise or Pro for Workstations. It does apparently work in Windows 11 except 24H2.

When the OS finally recognizes the filesystem, you may also get a Bitlocker prompt.

 

[evermorex76]

All versions of Windows 10 and 11 can read and write to ReFS partitions. It's just creating new ones that is restricted to certain versions, and booting to ReFS isn't possible with any Windows version. If those were the only drives in the "server" then at least one partition would have to be NTFS.

Win10/11 can also work with a Windows software RAID array, and it would just be automatically detected when you move the disks to another machine. With Windows software RAID1 you can just plug an individual drive in and it will behave like a normal drive, but Disk Management would show a broken array. If it's Windows RAID0, it could possibly show partitions you can't manage since they only function with both disks present, but it also ought to be showing a broken array warning (missing drive in Disk Management).

If it was true hardware RAID there wouldn't even be any visible partitions, but if it used "hybrid" RAID1 (fakeRAID) like is integrated into consumer chipsets (and the very low-end "server" RAID controllers in Dell and other OEM machines like the S100) then Windows could possibly see the partitions and in some cases even be able to work with them despite not having the same controller enabled.

Try using a third-party tool like AOMEI Partition Assistant to view the configuration and properties of the drives and the partitions. That will give you more information about how they're formatted. Are they GPT or MBR? Are they Basic Disks or Dynamic Disks (required for Windows RAID)? Can it read the filesystem type?

Are you able to plug both of them in at the same time to see if they might be picked up correctly when both are available? You can also use recovery tools like DMDE to detect the RAID configuration if there is one. The tool can also recover files if there is a problem, although not if it's a broken RAID0.

If you're trying to recover data for the neighbor, can they not tell you how they were configured?

 

[Digital~Dreams]

Assuming they are not RAID members, ReFS only works in Windows 10 Enterprise or Pro for Workstations. It does apparently work in Windows 11 except 24H2.

When the OS finally recognizes the filesystem, you may also get a Bitlocker prompt.

I will try another PC with Windows 11 as soon as possible.

 

[Digital~Dreams]

All versions of Windows 10 and 11 can read and write to ReFS partitions. It's just creating new ones that is restricted to certain versions, and booting to ReFS isn't possible with any Windows version. If those were the only drives in the "server" then at least one partition would have to be NTFS.

Win10/11 can also work with a Windows software RAID array, and it would just be automatically detected when you move the disks to another machine. With Windows software RAID1 you can just plug an individual drive in and it will behave like a normal drive, but Disk Management would show a broken array. If it's Windows RAID0, it could possibly show partitions you can't manage since they only function with both disks present, but it also ought to be showing a broken array warning (missing drive in Disk Management).

If it was true hardware RAID there wouldn't even be any visible partitions, but if it used "hybrid" RAID1 (fakeRAID) like is integrated into consumer chipsets (and the very low-end "server" RAID controllers in Dell and other OEM machines like the S100) then Windows could possibly see the partitions and in some cases even be able to work with them despite not having the same controller enabled.

Try using a third-party tool like AOMEI Partition Assistant to view the configuration and properties of the drives and the partitions. That will give you more information about how they're formatted. Are they GPT or MBR? Are they Basic Disks or Dynamic Disks (required for Windows RAID)? Can it read the filesystem type?

Are you able to plug both of them in at the same time to see if they might be picked up correctly when both are available? You can also use recovery tools like DMDE to detect the RAID configuration if there is one. The tool can also recover files if there is a problem, although not if it's a broken RAID0.

If you're trying to recover data for the neighbor, can they not tell you how they were configured?

Not able to connect both at the same time but noticed they had different partitioning via computer management. Unable to ask neighbour as she hasn't a clue, her ex is extremely weird and unpleasant so no communication there.... Will look into the tools you mentioned thanks !

 

[evermorex76]

The ex may have been a person who thought they were super-techy by doing stuff like running Windows Server and RAID0 at home (or maybe had legitimate reasons for it). If they're in a RAID0 configuration then you will need to get both drives connected at the same time, either internally or via USB, so that Windows can access the array itself (Windows won't do RAID via USB without workarounds) or a tool like DMDE can read it and copy the data (you'll need a destination that has at least enough space free as the size of the RAID array if you use the free version).