cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/40885318
I’m going to switch from Windows 11 to Linux soon but first I wish to backup every every data and config files I can in my current Windows installation, even those that wouldn’t natively work in Linux. I know the \Users folder is important to back up, but I don’t know what other directories I am missing.
Buy a new hard drive/SSD for your Linux installation. Put your Windows drive away in a drawer so all of its contents are saved, and you can swap it back in if you have to. A USB adapter can be helpful for retrieving files.
But first before you buy a new SSD don’t forget to go back to September of last year.
If you have enough space for it, just keep it in the PC.
I did this, and installed the old drive into a USB adapter so I could easily pull any documents I may want to access. The Linux install will mount a NTFS drive, so worked great for that.
For the OP, while you CAN have the PC boot up to the Windows drive plugged into USB, I would not recommend doing it more than a couple times. Windows seems to hate this; I’ve had two installations of Win10 Pro eat itself and become unbootable, could not be repaired. The files were still accessible through Linux though so was able to make copies.