Laptop full reset. Advice needed

[Kristian H]

Hi,

 

I'm planning on formatting my laptop because the drives are full and messy and I want a fresh start. However I need a lot of my data and I'm not exactly sure where on the drives the files are located. 

Is there a way for me to backup all data on my pc except for the OS? Or perhaps which folders do I need to save?

 

Thx ^-^ 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Copy the files to a external hdd, then copy them back.

[Kristian H]

Yes but which files T_T Will it work if i just copy the entire C and D drive over?

[AlphaGamer46]

1 minute ago, Kristian H said:

Yes but which files T_T Will it work if i just copy the entire C and D drive over?

The files you want to keep.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 hours ago, Kristian H said:

Hi,

 

I'm planning on formatting my laptop because the drives are full and messy and I want a fresh start. However I need a lot of my data and I'm not exactly sure where on the drives the files are located. 

Is there a way for me to backup all data on my pc except for the OS? Or perhaps which folders do I need to save?

 

Thx ^-^ 

Most of your generated data is stored in C:\Users.

 

You might have a few programs that store things in C:\ProgramData, but this is rare or it applies to global settings that usually are of no importance to you because they're already overwritten by what's in your %APPDATA% folder (if you don't know what or where this is, open up explorer, then type that into the address bar)

 

When you reinstall your Windows, make sure to use the same exact username that you used last time. This is important because you can simply copy back C:\Users to your new build and all of your program settings should be back. Or at the very least, you can copy the %APPDATA% folder from your back up to the current %APPDATA% folder.