[SOLVED] Question about backup

[Ghost-24]

So, my clumsy self kicked the power cord for my computer not once, but twice. Both times caused my computer to power off. Second time caused some problems. Got the problems fixed, because it affected my SSD. It's been fixed by getting a new SSD. Because my computer doesn't have very sensitive files on it, I never backed it up. However, now that I have everything 'mostly' working properly, I've got a question for y'all. I have the new SSD and the old SSD both still installed and operating on my computer. Both SSD's have the Windows OS on them, but I'm only operating off the new one. Even though I can't log into Windows on the old one (Black Screen of Death) I still have full access to all of its files while logged in on the new SSD. However, without ever having any sort of back up, is there a way to get all of those 'hidden' files from the old SSD to the new one? Example: Downloading Spotify ended up not working because it informed me that Spotify was already downloaded, but it's downloaded on the old drive. A search through File Explorer showed it being under AppData on the drive, but when I tried to follow that string to AppData (Users and such other files), AppData didn't display in the File Explorer. So, only doing a type search for Spotify actually popped it up, and no other means. I'd like to transfer all of the files from the old drive to the new one, so as to make downloading and installing those things a little easier, but I'm unsure how to do it.

Another similar question is when I figure out what to do, one way or the other, how do I go about repurposing the faulty drive for mass storage with ease of access and use in mind? It seems that if I want to try to run a program on the computer, and if it's on the old drive, I have no such luck and would have to re-install it on the new drive. Any way to get that to work so it's a fluid situation? Thanks!

 

[tshinhar]

Well, for your first question, you can get everything form your old drive to the new one, and it is very simple.

All you have to do is find what you want in the old drive (using file explorer and making sure you can see hidden folders) and copy it to the new drive

Do note that some softwares can have trouble when doing it

For the second question, you can just reformat the drive and it will become a storage drive

 

[BFG-9000]

Just copy all the files you want to save over to the new SSD, then clone/image the new SSD over the old one (overwriting it).

That would actually produce a bootable backup of everything, so if you ever corrupt the main drive again, you can just go into the BIOS and change the boot order to the old SSD, then be back up and running in under a minute!

I would suggest not installing programs on D: and just using it to store files. That way if you ever need to switch to using it, there won't be any missing program folders.