Installed Windows on an m.2 SSD, my old drives need to be formatted to be opened?

[lucagrabacr]

Hey guys so yeah, I have files on the other drives that I don't want to lose but Windows is asking me to format them. How do I do this without losing the drives' contents? 

 

The old boot drive appears just fine but the other drives don't

[Electronics Wizardy]

Have you tried mounting them in disk management? 

[TheGlenlivet]

The easiest way to do this (at least when I did it in the past) was to physically disable the old drive, boot from the new one, then use a USB to sata and get the data off of the old drive and then format it.

That way the computer will only have 1 windows install to boot to and you'll have no chance of accidentally formatting the wrong drive.

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

-Moved to Storage Devices-

[lucagrabacr]

Something weirder just happened, my OS lagged so I forced restart and now my m.2 boot drive won't appears on the boot option

[lucagrabacr]

Edit: Nvm the m.2 appears again after I shut down the PC. I guess I will follow the use a sata to usb cable to copy my old files suggestion by Glen, don't want to risk losing anything on my old drives

[PatXioPC]

Allocate the other drives from disk management or make them as active drives from diskpart in cmd.
And if you had your previous OS stored on the drive, copy the reusable files to your local C drive or keep those files and delete all the windows files. 

[lucagrabacr]

Nvm guys, the drives appear just fine now not sure what it was, cheers

[seagate_surfer]

The old drives should still be accessible even if they have an operating system, when a boot drive is used as secondary you will see the /root folder where the system is installed and sub folders (Drive letter: \Users\YourUsernameGoesHere), with all your belongings if there were any.

[a7mddiaa]

try installing something not windows on the m.2 ssd and try to view the old ssd also try another file explorer i had same problem with a usb and when i used another file explorer it worked