Removing drive as a datastore, ESXi 5.5

[Phaetos]

I am running ESXi 5.5 with 2 HD's as seperate datastores.  The server install has become slow and unstable so I wanted to blow out the system and just install the server on bare metal and not use ESXi anymore. The problem I am facing is that one HD is a 1TB drive that is half full of data that I don't want to lose.  How do I retain my data for use in a standard install that will not utilize ESXi? Is my best option to buy a 1TB external drive and copy off all my data to it, god that will be slow and time consuming, and then copy it back to the drive after the re-install?   If I do it that way, how do I remove the HD's from their datastores so that Windows Server will see them as a standard HD again?

I can set them up, but I've never had to take down an ESXi box before so I don't know how to proceed. Any help is much appreciated.

[rcporto]

Assuming you will install Windows Server on top of that physical server, you will really need to move the data to another place, and then copy back after install your Windows Server. The reason is because ESXi formats the disks with VMFS file system, and Windows Server do not recognize that type of file system.

[Phaetos]

So all I need to do is get a USB drive and just plug it into the physical server? How will ESXi or the server recognize the drive without it being added as a datastore?