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.
you don’t need “everything”… and if you did, you’d perhaps also need to recreate the entire working windows environment. so make full hdd backup image to satisfy that requirement—or, don’t reformat and reuse the drive, just pull it as-is for safekeeping–executing a full shutdown first: shutdown /s /t 0
as far as the user files go… this is the basics of what i do (migrations for home users is about half of my workload):
copy user libraries (the default locations windows saves your files to) for each user account:
robocopy c:\users(windowsuserprofiledir) d:(destinationonexternal) /e /dcopy:t /copy:dt /xjd /xa:sh /xd appdata /r:1 /w:1 /mt:2
put each user’s files into their own destination directory.
use care when backing up directories linked to or taken-over by cloud services (looking at you, onedrive). make sure the files copied actually exist on the destination drive.
export bookmarks and saved passwords from every browser and browser profile from each windows user account.
backup steam or its directories for later restoration, if wanted.
save mailstores from local mail clients. not many home users run a mail client with local stores anymore. the windows-only free-to-use (but not foss) ‘mailstore home’ in portable mode run off an external might be useful (yes, it can run in a vm later if needed). don’t forget to jot down mail server configs.
check ‘public’ and other places for stray files.
optionally, backup browser profile directories, zip 'em up (fastest compression is enough). if you restore entire profiles, you might preserve more of the browser environment… but chromium ones will still choke on logins, so having password exports is critically important. most people are fine with just having bookmarks and passwords migrated–which are easily backed up, and normally what i restore instead of entire profiles (unless it’s firefox to firefox, and windows to windows).
make sure you know the credentials for and can login to important sites and services from a different pc or a private window without leaning on saved sessions in existing browsers on the current windows pc.
if there’s something else specifically that you want to save, like a wallpaper that you don’t have the original source file for… a quick web search will likely reveal its location.