

Best option is a new seperate drive of course.
But besides that I can recommend making a image of the drive ans storing it somewhere. This way you can flash everything back, there would be a ton of applications that would not run if you try and restore the files only.
Last option should be to customly copy files from folders around. This would not guarantee you can restore Windows. But you maybe would be able to restore config at a much lower storage amount










I have opened and tried to fix all my things. Including multiple cheap mouses. Although I have not always been successful, I mostly see it as an experience, and as a learning moment. It’s broken anyway, so it could only get better. Quite often I’m able to improve on it too! (add USB C charging to a mouse)