Transferring an old hard drive to a new PC often results in data loss.
Transferring an old hard drive to a new PC often results in data loss.
his teammate planned to upgrade his computer using one of our older models, inserting a SATA SSD into the Windows 11 system. after logging in, he realized a significant portion of files—documents and photos—had disappeared, appearing under an unfamiliar drive. he asked me to help resolve the issue. i tried searching through the file library without success and used Windstat to check for missing files, but most of the SSD space was occupied and the data wasn’t there. Windstat indicated the files were inside his user folder, yet nothing showed up. it seems some files might be corrupted, possibly because the previous system ran Windows 10 while he connected a Windows 11 SSD. i need suggestions on how to recover or replace these lost files.
When the older PC had two drives, the photos and files were probably saved on the secondary one. This is something I've frequently noticed businesses or individuals do to free up space on smaller boot or OS drives. A straightforward test would be to bring the SSD back to the old computer and check if the folders are functioning properly again.
regrettably both connections were made to the new computer during this process
Could there be an additional drive available or is everything configured through MS Onedrive? If using Onedrive, it might have issues and require re-logging in. Files and documents will be stored in the cloud via Onedrive rather than on the local machine if the default setup is used.
I rechecked the case and found no third drive present. My colleague mentioned he couldn’t determine how a single drive functions. What concerns me most is that despite using a lot of space, very little appears on the system—neither in searches nor in hidden files, and the Windows Explorer doesn’t show anything.
The original download folder and desktop folder disappeared, which indicates the PC was initially in English. However, when the drive arrived on the new computer, everything had been converted to Norwegian—the language I speak. Consequently, all files were renamed into Norwegian. From what I observe, it wasn’t a temporary user profile, and not all files were lost; only a significant portion was affected.