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I have an exchange server with three drives all NTFS. The OS was reloaded and now the other two drives show as unknown format. Is there a way to get back into those drives? Thank you for any help you can provide.

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was right to check basic filesystem type, and 's followup confirms the OS was reinstalled — that context points to a few common, verifiable causes rather than a simple FAT/NTFS mixup. The two drives showing "unknown format" usually means one of three things: the partition table or NTFS metadata (boot sector/MFT) was damaged; the volumes are dynamic/part of a software RAID and Windows sees them as "Foreign"; or the controller/driver/RAID metadata is not being recognized by the new install. Do not initialize or format those disks yet — that will overwrite data.

Quick, safe checklist (do these before any write operations):

  • Inspect in Disk Management: run diskmgmt.msc and note how each disk is labelled (Foreign, Offline, Not Initialized, RAW, No Media).
  • Use DiskPart for details:
    diskpart
list disk
select disk N
detail disk
  • If Disk Management shows "Foreign" (dynamic disk), use the Import Foreign Disks command only after confirming these are the original disks.
  • If a disk is "Not Initialized" or shows as RAW, do not click Initialize. Image the disk first (sector-level) and then use a recovery tool such as TestDisk to scan and recover partition tables/boot sectors.
  • If the server used a hardware RAID or a vendor controller, check the RAID BIOS/utility and reinstall the correct controller driver before making changes in Windows; missing drivers often make volumes invisible or appear as unknown.

If the data is business-critical, stop and create a disk image and consider a professional recovery service. If proceeding yourself, make a full read-only image, then use TestDisk or mounting via a Linux live environment to perform non-destructive recovery attempts.

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Member Avatar for Thong_Ispector

Check to make sure that the OS didnt go back on as a fat 32 ...

Member Avatar for Gunslinger_86

All the drives are NTFS. When I reloaded the OS I formated the drive to NTFS.

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