Hi, I'm trying to reset Windows 10 right now, and I want to keep my old files. From what I understand this leaves the files exactly where they are right now. Is there a way to reset and keep them all in a separate folder like the Windows.old folder when upgrading to 10? Thanks in advance.
Not that I know of. But if you always keep a full backup, preferably on a physically separate medium for more than the short term, that should do what you want.
Windows File History, e.g. allows you to maintain current file backups.
Disk imaging (strongly recommended here) protects your whole PC allowing you to recover without technical help from
- ransomware
- hard disk failure or corruption
- user error
- the unexpected
- unbootable pc
(hardware problems aside)
and provides a full backup.
Good backup procedures are the best way to secure your data.
There are other recovery procedures besides resetting your PC. For example, an in-place upgrade repair gives you a new copy of Windows and keeps all your programs and data.
Hi fribbels!
Are you talking about system and data files or just data files?
If you want to keep both (system and user data) @dalchina gave you instructions.
If you just want to keep user data (i.e. documents, pictures etc. in your user folders), then you can move location of your files to another partition or drive and when resetting Windows, just point to those location again.
There are some nice tutorials here, and similar threads.
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