Possible to delete windows 10 system files?

[woofercooker]

I installed a new copy of windows 10 onto a new hardrive yesterday as my old drive's health status came up as caution is crystaldisk. i had my old hardrive connected at the time of the new instalation ( iv'e since learned that was a rookie misteake) once the fresh copy of windows 10 was installed I copied all my important data from the old drive to the new drive which took a few hours, I then removed the old drive from the system and windows would no longer boot up! from what iv'e learned from google collage installing with more than one drive connected can lead to some boot files being stored on the 2nd drive = epic fail.

Now im stuck with a new drive i can't boot into and has all my imporant files on it, i am going to have to install windows 10 again onto yet another new drive which isn't a big deal but is it possible to delete the old windows 10 system files from the other drive i just installed on and just keep my personal files? i remember trying to delete windows xp from an old drive and was unable to without formatting it and erasing everything.

 

[Semple]

I installed a new copy of windows 10 onto a new hardrive yesterday as my old drive's health status came up as caution is crystaldisk. i had my old hardrive connected at the time of the new instalation ( iv'e since learned that was a rookie misteake) once the fresh copy of windows 10 was installed I copied all my important data from the old drive to the new drive which took a few hours, I then removed the old drive from the system and windows would no longer boot up! from what iv'e learned from google collage installing with more than one drive connected can lead to some boot files being stored on the 2nd drive = epic fail.

Now im stuck with a new drive i can't boot into and has all my imporant files on it, i am going to have to install windows 10 again onto yet another new drive which isn't a big deal but is it possible to delete the old windows 10 system files from the other drive i just installed on and just keep my personal files? i remember trying to delete windows xp from an old drive and was unable to without formatting it and erasing everything.

Did you delete the boot partition on your old drive? Could always boot from that and then copy your files elsewhere.

Failing that, boot the drive in recovery mode and launch the command prompt, insert USB and copy your files that way.

 

[darael]

If I need to access files on a system that won't boot, I boot up Macrium Reflect from a USB stick. This almost always gives me access to my files.