I recently bought a new SSD and cloned my old one to it. It was working fine until I transferred some files from a USB drive. My laptop froze and displayed a BSOD during the transfer, possibly due to the battery being low. Now, when I try to boot the SSD, I either get a "hard drive not found" error or it endlessly loops during a disk check. If I skip the check, I can access the drive for a bit before it crashes again with a BSOD, showing MEMORY_MANAGEMENT errors or disk-related issues.
I suspect there's corruption from an interrupted file sync with OneDrive. There's a folder with an invalid reparse point that I can't delete. I can see some files by connecting the SSD to another system, but it often gets stuck on certain files.
How can I safely recover the files from this SSD, especially since it contains licensed software like Visual Studio purchased by my employer? I prefer to format it to exFAT afterward. Will copying the registry directory be enough to recover specific software licenses?
4 Answers
Visual Studio is usually tied to a user account or a license key rather than a specific machine. So, if you reinstall it, you can just use your account or key. But for the other software, it depends on the licensing model. If you’re unsure about the license key, checking your registry might be a good idea. Just be careful with the process!
First, try accessing the C:WindowsMinidump directory for any dump files. These logs can help with diagnosing BSOD issues. If you find any dump files, upload them to file-sharing sites like MediaFire or Catbox. If there are no dump files, follow some guides on setting Windows to create small memory dumps for future troubleshooting.
For Visual Studio, you can use the community version for free. As for the other software, your best bet is to contact the providers directly and explain your situation. They might be able to help recover your licenses.
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