All folders on C: backed up but unfortunately not in form of image

[Mollius]

Two weeks before my old Vista ultimate went bust I had, for security’s sake,
copied all data on C: to an external HD – instead of saving them in the form
of an image. This was rather stupid. For my newly installed Vista, How should
I now make best use of the saved data? Try to copy at least some of the files
individually ? Would you have any suggestion?
Many thanks in advance
Mollius

 

[Bill Daggett]

Two weeks before my old Vista ultimate went bust I had, for security’s sake,
copied all data on C: to an external HD – instead of saving them in the form
of an image. This was rather stupid. For my newly installed Vista, How should
I now make best use of the saved data? Try to copy at least some of the files
individually ? Would you have any suggestion?
Many thanks in advance
Mollius

You're going to have to be more specific about the type of data.

If it is merely contents of your Documents folder, and similar
folders, copy them en masse to their destination folders and when
you're sure you've accomplished what you wanted to do, it will be safe
to dump the backups.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Two weeks before my old Vista ultimate went bust I had, for security’s sake,
copied all data on C: to an external HD – instead of saving them in the form
of an image. This was rather stupid.

No, not stupid at all. What you did is fine.

For my newly installed Vista, How should
I now make best use of the saved data? Try to copy at least some of the files
individually ?

Simply connect the external drive and copy them to the internal drive.
If it's data that was in the \Documents folder, copy it there. You
don't have to do it individually, do them all at once. Use Ctrl-A to
select all the files, then drag them to the internal \Documents
folder.

 

[Mollius]

Hallo,
many thanks.
Unfortunately I did not express myself clearly enough. My "DOCUMENTS" have
been on a separate partition. With "Data" I meant all the Windows Programm
folders and settings, also additional programs on my old (and gone) C:
partition. Had I saved them as an image, there would be no problem, but I had
them secured by simply copying all of C: to an external drive.
The question is in what way should I now make best use of the saved folders?
Copy the folders as they are nto the new Vista installation will probably not
work.
Would you have the patience and look into again?
Mollius

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hallo,
many thanks.
Unfortunately I did not express myself clearly enough. My "DOCUMENTS" have
been on a separate partition. With "Data" I meant all the Windows Programm
folders and settings, also additional programs on my old (and gone) C:
partition. Had I saved them as an image, there would be no problem, but I had
them secured by simply copying all of C: to an external drive.
The question is in what way should I now make best use of the saved folders?
Copy the folders as they are nto the new Vista installation will probably not
work.
Would you have the patience and look into again?

You're welcome, but if that's what you meant by "data," you are using
the word in a very atypical and personal manner.

If you are doing a clean reinstallation of Windows, nothing you have
backed up within \Windows will be of any use. The same is true of
almost all the installed programs. Except for a rare, typically small,
program, all programs have many entries within \windows, in the
registry and elsewhere; if Windows is reinstalled, programs installed
under it will not work. They will have to be reinstalled.

 

[Jeff Richards]

For some of your installed applications, you may be able to recover data
from the \Users\<username>\AppData\<location>\<appname> folder relating to
application-specific things like user options, but what is stored there and
what would and would not work when copied back is different for each app.
Since you are re-installing these apps anyway, there's probably no harm in
attempting a restore of AppData (folder by folder). For things like
favourites and email the items may be recoverable, but you will need to
handle each application on its own - there's no general procedure that works
across everything.