Copy Files From One Drive to Another

So I have to reinstall my computer completely and I want to backup my hard drive to this external hard drive. I want to be able to have access to all files from this external hard drive. I'm doing this just so I can get to game saves and transfer it over when needed. That is pretty much the only reason for what I'm doing.

So because of that I thought a simple copy paste of everything would work fine but after it finished pasting, it didn't even paste everything and didn't do much major areas. I'm guessing there is a tool I will have to use but I can't find one that does what I'm trying to do.

Can anyone help me?

AddRAM said:

Try drag and drop.

I tried that. It didn't work.

Are you trying to paste to the root of the HDD or to a Folder on the HDD? Usually works best to have a Folder [any name of your choice] and Paste into it. Before copying make sure the files are not marked as Hidden in right-click and Properties.

Berton said:

Are you trying to paste to the root of the HDD or to a Folder on the HDD? Usually works best to have a Folder [any name of your choice] and Paste into it. Before copying make sure the files are not marked as Hidden in right-click and Properties.

When I tried it, I had created a folder in my external drive to transfer to. Where in properties do I go to mark everything as not hidden?

Properties, General tab, check boxes at bottom.

whs said:

I would make an image. Then you can later mount the image VHD and extract whatever you need. The easiest is with this command in an elevated command prompt:

WBADMIN START BACKUP -backupTarget:f: -include:c:

This will make an image of C on disk F (the root). The image will be a VHD which you can mount (attach) in Disk Management. Right click on the Action tab (see picture) and follow the wizard. The mounted image will then appear in Computer and you can deal with it like with any other drive.

Looks nice, but is there a way to exclude a certain directory?

I would want it to create an image of everything except for "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps". Would something like that be possible?

whs said:

Not when you create the image. But once you mount the image, you can delete that part.

Except there is a problem with this. I will never even get to the part where I can delete it. That directory is almost 2TB in size. My external hard drive is only 1TB.

If this method won't work, is there another way you know of that could work?