I’m finally planning to shift my primary PC to Linux in the coming week. I want to ensure all of my data from Windows be transferred to Linux, including my personal files and application data, even if there is no native support in Linux to access it.

For context, my setup has become untidy over the years; I have two partitions :C & :D and stored personal data in each partition, plus I have created directories of my own in several odd locations which I cannot recall but they also contain some critical files. I only have a single NVMe SSD installed that is almost out of space so I cannot dualboot, although I can make use of an external HDD during the transfer. I’ve already had some experience in Linux by installing it in another PC immediately after purchasing it.

Is there some way to automatically prepare all my data in Windows for transfer into Linux directly or in a backup drive accessible in Linux? Please don’t tell me I have to copy and paste all files by hand because given the criticality of the stored data I would rather stay in Windows than risking data loss.

  • enchantedgoldapple@sopuli.xyzOP
    31·
    1 day ago

    The only backup solution Windows readily gives me is made in a manner that locks me in their ecosystem so I can’t really use it to migrate to Linux. Could you suggest a different solution perhaps?

    • apt_install_coffee@lemmy.ml
      2·
      14 hours ago

      Start with a portable hard drive which only has one job “store a copy of your critical data”.

      • move the drive as infrequently as possible, especially when it’s turned on.
      • only ever write to it when you do your periodic backup.
      • only plug it in when you need to read from or write to it.

      It’s a paranoid set of rules, but if this data is critical, this is a good idea. Even better is to have an additional copy of that data in cloud storage.

      As far as operating system, you absolutely can use a Linux machine, but learning a new system risks you accidentally deleting data so be careful. Linux has ways of reading windows-formatted hard drives, so as much as I prefer Linux, I would say don’t try new things on the machine which hold critical data.

    • MartianSands@sh.itjust.works
      8·
      1 day ago

      There are a million ways to back data up, many of them are as simple as “copy it to removable media”, and don’t require any clever operating system features at all.

      What removable media you can use depends on the quantity of data, and how long you need the backup to last. Maybe DVDs, or USB drives. If the data is valuable enough, you can also pay for cloud storage and upload it