Data recovery

[SRN33]

 Just purchased a new PC everything is set up and working fine on the PC. However I am looking to recover information off of an older SSD drive like five years old. I don’t want to have to go through searching and activating programs I just want to recover files and folders. Definitely willing to pay for software that  Will get the job done successfully and with as little difficulty as possible. The majority of these files are documentation as well as a few thousand photos. 

 Any and all help and suggestions would be welcome. 

 Thanks in advance 

[ddennis002]

5 minutes ago, SRN33 said:

 Just purchased a new PC everything is set up and working fine on the PC. However I am looking to recover information off of an older SSD drive like five years old. I don’t want to have to go through searching and activating programs I just want to recover files and folders. Definitely willing to pay for software that  Will get the job done successfully and with as little difficulty as possible. The majority of these files are documentation as well as a few thousand photos. 

 Any and all help and suggestions would be welcome. 

 Thanks in advance 

Plug it into the new system if it works still, windows should recognize it and assign it a drive letter.

[Windows7ge]

It's not hard to do the work yourself if you know where the files are located.

 

Most common locations are:

C:/Users/[username]

C:/Users/[username]/Desktop

C:/Users/[username]/Documents

C:/Users/[username]/Downloads

C:/Users/[username]/Music

C:/Users/[username]/Pictures

C:/Users/[username]/Videos

C:/Users/[username]/%appdata%

C:/%ProgramData%

 

Then for programs:

C:/Program Files

C:/Program Files (x86)

 

You have to be careful there though as many programs will send certain data to the %appdata% directory and even the C:/%ProgramData% directory.

 

If you want to recover programs that require keys you're a little screwed there depending on the application unless you have a real in-depth understanding of each applications files. The way most software programmers design their software if they use an activation server somewhere on the Internet is it's intended for one time use meaning you install the program once and it's on that computer (drive) for life not intended to be moved.

 

If you have the keys handy you can try installing your various software and hope they all activate offline or that the developer way nice enough to give your 3 or 5 activations per key. Sometimes these servers go offline due to EOL of the software and you'll have to find an alternative program.

 

Personally I don't have much faith in these programs that state they automatically transfer personal files from old drives to new ones because it isn't possible that they can account for everything you'll still find yourself going in manually to pick up the pieces it didn't get by which point you paid for software that you had to do the work yourself anyways. If you must use some type of auto-retrieving software I'd look into an open-source version (free).

[SRN33]

On 5/7/2019 at 5:27 PM, ddennis002 said:

Plug it into the new system if it works still, windows should recognize it and assign it a drive letter.

 Yes windows does recognize it and does a lot it a drive letter. My thing is I am trying to get everything off of it without having to reinstall all the programs and go through them to pull off the data. I just basically want the drive on there find all of the documents, photos, and such as that with out reinstalling all the programs. Does that make sense? 

[HarryNyquist]

3 hours ago, SRN33 said:

 Yes windows does recognize it and does a lot it a drive letter. My thing is I am trying to get everything off of it without having to reinstall all the programs and go through them to pull off the data. I just basically want the drive on there find all of the documents, photos, and such as that with out reinstalling all the programs. Does that make sense? 

It makes sense. Unfortunately you can't do it. The programs will need reinstalled as their corresponding registry information doesn't exist on your new computer, nor do configuration files, shared content, etc.

 

Documents, pictures, etc. can just be left alone or copied over, however.