How do I access data stored on my SSD prior to Umbrel installation?

I have files on my external SSD drive that I initially used to run a node through my windows laptop. I recently setup a raspberry pi 4 and thought that since I had space on the drive, that I could keep those files on the ssd drive, install umbrel, and pull files from it in the future when I needed them. When trying to plub my ssd drive back into my windows device, it shows up as a Healthy disk partition, however, it doesn’t display in the file explorer, and doesn’t seem accessible. My question, is how would I go about getting that data now? Is there a way to access files from the umbrel os?

Hi Jack,

In the install instructions on the Umbrel landing page https://umbrel.com/umbrelos, under “Install on Raspberry Pi”, this warning is included:

“Unless the SSD was previously used to run Umbrel, any existing data on it will automatically be deleted when you turn on the Raspberry Pi.”

I believe there are recovery utilities that you can try if there was valueable data on that SSD, but that data can only be found with those utilities if it was not written over. I’m not a programmer, but I’d hazard a guess that as quickly as the Umbrel install runs on a raspberry pi, it’s not zeroing out the drive.