Can you copy paste windows files

[Rylyguy]

Weird question. I think the answer is no. But I’d like to ask. If Disk A has windows. But I want to swap to Disk B. Could I install windows on Disk B. Boot to Disk A. Delete the Files from Disk B’s C : drive partition. Then copy and paste the files from Disk A’s C : partition to Disk B’s Partition. Would it boot just fine after doing this.

[kelvinhall05]

What are you trying to copy over/save?

[Rylyguy]

Program files, program files x86, user.  @kelvinhall05

[ProjectBox153]

That's not how that works. I think what you're looking for is a cloning utility. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

6 minutes ago, Rylyguy said:

Program files, program files x86, user.  @kelvinhall05

Program files, not necessarily. 

 

User files, yep. Just remap the location for your Libraries afterwards.

[Rylyguy]

1 minute ago, ProjectBox153 said:

That's not how that works. I think what you're looking for is a cloning utility. 

Yes. I’d like to. But it doesn’t work right with windows to go. 

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, Rylyguy said:

Yes. I’d like to. But it doesn’t work right with windows to go. 

What do you mean? 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

@Rylyguy just to add onto my last comment. Don't like cut and paste the entire User folder since you would want to keep stuff like AppData where it is. But your Photos, Music, Videos, etc. can be moved around to wherever you want. 

[Rylyguy]

Just now, ProjectBox153 said:

What do you mean? 

I’ve tried cloning the drive. But it errors out. In my hypothetical. Disk A is using a Windows To Go install. 

[ProjectBox153]

2 minutes ago, Rylyguy said:

I’ve tried cloning the drive. But it errors out. In my hypothetical. Disk A is using a Windows To Go install. 

What utility did you use? Why not just do a fresh installation onto the new drive? You don't have to do a special Windows To Go install in order to run Windows from a USB drive.

[Rylyguy]

3 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

What utility did you use? Why not just do a fresh installation onto the new drive? You don't have to do a special Windows To Go install in order to run Windows from a USB drive.

I used Hasleo WinToUsb. And I just want to copy my current windows files to a second drive because I need to reinstall to this drive. Then once I reinstalled I wanted to just copy the folders back. Some stuff fricked up the registry. 

[ProjectBox153]

2 minutes ago, Rylyguy said:

I used Hadley WinToUsb. And I just want to copy my current windows files to a second drive because I need to reinstall to this drive. Then once I reinstalled I wanted to just copy the folders back. Some stuff fricked up the registry. 

Why not just do a clean install of Windows? It gives you a good opportunity to clean everything out.

[Rylyguy]

20 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

Why not just do a clean install of Windows? It gives you a good opportunity to clean everything out.

Because I have lots of save files and different things I need. 

[Rylyguy]

I’ll just manually copy them to a flash drive and do a fresh install. 

[homeap5]

If you copy everything to WinToUsb prepared drive then you loose your prepared installation. These programs (WinToUsb and similar) preparing Windows on usb drive and that "preparing" part is important here. If you overwrite all files, then preparation will gone. It's not that they creating some magic files, but changing registry settings and adds drivers etc.