How to have windows not format a drive (read for more info cause there's many details)

[ravegulus]

My dad wanted to move to ssd for his computer cause his hdd was getting slow and as preparation I put a backup on my gaming pc just in case using minitools backup. Afterwards windows asked to format and I did the format and the files corrupted. after a recovery a ton of files were lost so I went to the backup. now I'm hopefully waiting as I'm putting the backup data back on the hdd and wondering if there's a way to not have it formatted on my dads pc or a way to keep all the data on it and have it visible as it has business files on it

(It will be still transferring files for the next hour from the time this is posted)

[Donut417]

46 minutes ago, ravegulus said:

My dad wanted to move to ssd for his computer cause his hdd was getting slow and as preparation I put a backup on my gaming pc just in case using minitools backup. Afterwards windows asked to format and I did the format and the files corrupted. after a recovery a ton of files were lost so I went to the backup. now I'm hopefully waiting as I'm putting the backup data back on the hdd and wondering if there's a way to not have it formatted on my dads pc or a way to keep all the data on it and have it visible as it has business files on it

(It will be still transferring files for the next hour from the time this is posted)

So after you backed up the data it just asked to format the drive?

[C2dan88]

6 hours ago, ravegulus said:

terwards windows asked to format and I did the format and the files corrupted.

Only time it will do this is for brand new drives or the filesystem has become corrupted. What method you using to copying the files over?

Safest option would be to clone the hdd contents to a new drive if you can.