How does this video not have more views? I've been searching online for the past few hours how to access my files and can't believe it's this simple. Thank you so much, liked and subscribed!

You have sincerely saved my life. I enjoy writing stories, have done so for years, and I post them online to read. I haven't written anything in so long due to depression, but I got back into it and started sharing it again. Then my laptop took a shit on me, and I feared I had lost everything. Now I know there's hope! Maybe not for the laptop itself, but I can recover the important things. Thank you so much!

Your recovery process (using notepad as file explorer) is brilliant ! My boot sector was fried and the "pros" that I consulted said HDD must be re-imaged with all data lost. I got it all back using this method. THANK YOU !!!

Not enough words to tell you how thankful I am! My computer has been basically unusable for the last three days and I was afraid to do anything because my latest backup was very old, thanks to you I can now try and get my computer back, while keeping all of my data! Thousands thanks, Antoine

You have literally just saved my life. I thought I was going to lose all my personal data when reinstalling windows but thanks to you I don’t have to. Great video!!

Thank you so much!!! You saved ALL of my memories from the past 8 years. Thank you!!

Out of all videos in youtube and all of the articles that I googled, this is the only thing that helped me access my files. I run into some error and my computer stuck in 'diagnosing your pc'. Now, I was able to back up all my files and reset my computer. Thank you so much! You're awesome!

Thank you so much this made my day you will probably never read this but I don’t care

Bro I'm having the repair disk error... and this is saving me... I'm taking the whole night to just back up my personal files THANK YOU SO MUCH

This guy here just saved my life. My PC went into blue screen and didn't turned on. Would have lost my important files without this video.

After the latest Win 10 update my system failed to boot. I wish I had viewed this tutorial earlier. Instead I lost some data installing the last backup. I am prepared now thanks to your work..

You have saved a lot of people from having to let go of their memories. I just saved 14 years worth of images. Thank you!

Thanks so much for this video!!! I saved my precious files from my pc that crashed overnight!! GOD BLESS!! I stayed up entire night trying to fix my Win 10 system, but never recovered, so thought had lost all my data. Really appreciate this support!!

OMG - You are a life saver! My laptop crashed yesterday after MS installed More updates, against my will, and I have not been able to get it to boot into safe Mode or anything. Ironically, I have a recent ISO file on my hard drive. I went into cmd prompt and thought I could do an "old fashioned" Copy file onto a flash drive, but I guess DOS copy commands don't work in Windows10. I'm an "old school" techie, so I don't know how to do much at command prompts anymore. I did a Dir on all .EXE programs in my Windows directory and was looking for some way to copy my files over to a flash drive. I did a DISM to see the parameters but everything was giving me an error. I typed DISM.log and surprisingly it opened in NotePad! So, I was looking at my devices trying to see if the system was seeing the flash drive or not. I looked at the File Structure using NotePad but didn't know I could COPY and paste files over like you did! That's amazing! I was SO close, but you are amazing. I love your videos! Now I just have to figure out if I can actually make a bootable flash drive with the ISO file that's on my computer, because I just made that one in January before a bunch of other Updates came down. Microsoft is causing me WAY too much work with having to fix my computers after their Horrible Feature Updates that I don't even want! I spend more time fixing my computers than actually getting work done.

You are a hero! read this knowing you have made some extremely happy! My GF had lost access to all her Uni work, its now 0245am after hours of effort and your video means she is not royally screwed. Please keep doing what you're doing! I hope you read this and we both wish you all the very best with the channel.

I am loving the internet and YOU at the moment. A few years ago I would have been stuck on this and would certainly have lost all my data. A solution so simple. As others have commented, a bloody life (and marriage) saver! Thank you very much!!

Thank you very much for this, this is what I wanted and wish could have found earlier, although you only recommended to back up small files using this method, I used it to backup about 500-600 GBs from my internal drive :-) thanks a lot again.

Absolutely Brilliant, I have spent about 4 hours trying to recover a folder of 500 wedding jpg`s in my laptop with this re-boot loop. Everything thing I have tried will not repair this fault, its trashed my OS Brian has once again saved the day showing how to recover these files and folders It so easy when instructed by an expert

this is a perfect way of recovering files from a failed disk, I'll use this method from now on, thanks a lot!

I want to thank you very much for this tutorial. I was able to recover 12 years of my projects from my dying hard drive. You're OG for this one

Thank you for saving all my son's school work and making me a super mum

THANK YOU SO MUCH YOUR A LIFE SAVER 😭! I didn't know how I was going to get my files back at all until this tutorial!! I had so many art files saved on there too- glad to get them back haha thank you again 💖

You can't believe how much I thank you this tutorial. Two days tring to make different bootable usb to access the files... and this worked like charm!

I am almost finished copying everything onto the external drive according to your video (thank you!) but its now saying "not enough memory to complete this action".. there is still plenty of disk space on the the backup drive, is there a way to free up some memory so i can get the last of my data backed up? thanks

I think you stayed some where with Microsoft developers because you understand it very deeply. Thanks from Pakistan

Oh my god... It blows my mind how simple this is. thank you so much man, you just saved me from losing years of hard work

One more thing that i found! You can use winrar! Winrar can show hidden files/folders. It makes it easy to backup Appdata/Programdata of a particular user

Love your channel. You videos are to the point without veering off-topic like so many others do. I recommend your channel to everyone who needs help with their computer. After 25 years of IT I'm done fixing other people's machines. I say let Brian do it. :-)

I was a bit skeptical since it looked so easy, but it actually worked. You saved me time and money, so I am eternally grateful!

Thank you so much for such simplicity! Any other method I've seen suggested uses far more CMD prompts and appears to be less straightforward; with this I copied my entire D drive (c.800GB) to my external SSD in about 30 mins. My Win 10 OS decided to commit seppuku recently but at least I've been able to retrieve my photos and files.

Thank you so much! All my important files are saved and I can now reinstall windows.

Four years late but thank you! Really simplified my life

Thanks man, saved my files then formatted the computer. 5 Star

thank you you just saved me 6 months of game development all of my games would have been gone and i would have probably stopped making games for a year

Unfortunately it's not working for me, so close yet so far. When I get to the open files in notepad part. Drive C (where windows at and where files I need to recover) doesn't open. Thanks tho, this is useful for future issues where this could be a solution

you are a saviour i was not able to backup or delete files , its been days i was about to throw my laptop to the service, thankyou so much

thank you very much. I've been stuck to other yt videos for weeks in finding the right method until I found yours.

Thanks a lot... I recovered all my important datas using this method while my window was crashed

This is brilliant ! Thank you ! I need to move many files because my Win 7 hard drive seems to be failed. So I found that you can open TWO instances of notepad and drag/drop folders from one "open" window to another ! It will lag during the copying process but be patient.

great tip, never thought of that, i've recovered files using dos commands or by booting thru linux, but using notepad makes much more sense :)

Thank you so much. This helped me recover my data.

wow, really great video i cannot believe what I am seeing it with my eyes, i was looking for backup my laptop, i can't explain this video solved my problem i was so worried ,after watch the video now this worked perfectly for me thank you so much brother..

Man thank you this is hands down the best recovery video I could find. You’re awesome.

Great tutorial. I will try to back up files when my hard drive arrives but can confirm notepad works and all my files are still visible.

This worked up until i tried opening up notepad 😅 notepad refused to open so it seems like something super important must have been damaged in my pc! Doing some work arounds and hoping for the best! I'm glad this was able to work for others though

Omg! I had to buy a new computer because my other one won't start! Thank you so much for the notepad idea! This helped save my important files!

I usually get by on Kaspersky Rescue Disc, but it's always good to have a variety of methods available.

Been searching for hours for a solution like this. Amazing, can't thank you enough

Please help me.. when I'm in the notepad looking for files I see the drives but they are inaccessible only my external usb drive and the bootx drive appear why...:(

This video is exactly what I was looking for. It saved the day. Thank you so much!

This is awesome, sure it's weird to use notepad as an file explorer. But it works!!! Best tutorial video around. 😘

Thank you! My Windows crashed to an unopenable point after a driver update. Thanks to you I can recover my documents!

thank you it really helped me. first I didn't have enough space in my c drive after watching your video I managed to get more space in c drive.

THANK YOU!!!!!! My computer crashed and before reinstalling windows I've been trying for days to backup my files to a USB using the Xcopy and copy commands but to an avail...

2 Years we are doing this... :) Thx Brian. !!

Thank you so much you saved my day bro , i was worried for losing important files in my pc your video helped me 100%

God bless you! I tried live cd's and everything like 12 times and did not work, but this was super easy since I only cared about one file with my thesis. Thank you.

Look, Dude, The operating system of my pc restarts all the time. When you think it will start to work normally, it restarts again. So tell me how can I keep everything I have on my pc and fix this issue. I don't want anything to be deleted, bc I have too much information and programs, and I want to keep it. So tell me what are my options? What can I do only using BIOS? Can I make that way a backup of my windows 10? I'm confused, when you do backup, do you put those files on the USB, and at the same time on the USB, there is an iso file of windows? How do you start the program?

Thank you sir for the directives. Please, I'll like to know if I can still recover my files from a 301 error harddisk with the system already in loop?

thank you so much my bro you made may day. i was very worried about my lost data just cause of you i m very happy now. god bless you and your family.

OMG! THANK YOU!!!!! Let me tell you how happy I am. So after trying every option in the advanced options to fix my computer I couldn't fix my computer. My laptop is almost 1 yr old. I called HP and after all the tests they had me do they determined it is a windows 10 error and not my laptop. So they were going to walk me through the steps to reinstall windows 10 but it will delete all my files. They told me there is no way to save them.... so i decided to do some more research. I even called Geek squad. They said I can drop it off for $200 and they will try to save my files and install windows. Well I found your video and my files are being SAVED right now! I am so happy! I am a graphic designer and I am so bad at backing up my work to my external hard drive. 😁 thank you so much! ***EDIT....... I Just tried this with my old laptop before i bought the last ones that was stuck at the start screen... i was told the hard drive was corrupt...... so i bought the computer i just wrote about. Well i just copied all my files i had lost. 3 yrs worth!!! Im so happy!

😭😭😭😭😭 Thankyou so much. I almost lost all my Data which is the only backup for my work. Would have taken months to remake all of it. 🙏 Thankyou. Merry Christmas and a Happy New year sir.

Simple and best way to backup. Thanks sir from Chennai India

I think this method not working for password protect pc

Everything worked perfectly. I just recovered my files. Thank you very much sir.

Not enough words to tell you how thankful!

those who are getting errors while writing notepad.exe, here is solution create a file (using cmd) with .txt extension and open it.

Thank you so much I had so many important videos for KZfaq and other important music and documents I thought I would never get these back thank you so much you're such a lifesaver

Thanks a lot for the tutorial!

OMG.... You saved me. Now I can back up my files. Windows 10 is awful if you don't have the right computer

Thank you so much. I watched many of your videos to solve PC issues. Thanks

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH I THOUGHT I WAS NOT GRADUATING ANYMORE BECAUSE I CANT RECOVER MY FILES. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

Was looking for this video. Found it by your notification. 👌

I can get as far as notepad, and opening. However, my folders are unrecognisable. My documents, etc, aren't even there. If i click on libraries, downloads, etc, it won't even open the folders. The menu just stays still with the same options as before.

Awesome video! Worked like a charm to save lots of pics and files! Thank you!

Sir this is simply awesome. You really helped in getting my family data. God bless your sir

As usual an awesome video. I especially like it when You make video tutorials that works not just for win 10 but also other versions. :)

Thanks boss you really made my day i thought i lost my data..by using this tric I backed up all my data

this probably saved my life rn

Pro Tip: If your hardware (disk?) is in working condition and/or you are just not able to access files or folders from another system (for microsoft security reasons which dosen't let you tamper other system's documents etc.) You could just cut/paste all the files/folders into the root directory that is straight to C: Drive (E: for Britec09 case) where windows is installed. I have seen when files are straight into the root directory they can be easilu accessed from other computers by simply plugging in your Hard disk in the other system. When files are into one of the hardProtected folders like /User/name they just crash if you try to reach them from any other system.

Thank you so much for this tutorial! Saved all my data!! The notepad hack is absolutley genious!

Your videos are first class.

Sir, do we need to same Windows version as bootable that is in my pc or I can use any version as bootable?

Thank you Brian. I had this happen to me today on an old acer i have. I had to reset it as luckily that option appeared. My toshiba laptop looks very sick so i posted a query in your forum. Waiting now for any suggested remedies. Thanks again.

I found a way to open multiple tabs of explorer to make the job easier. 1) In *Notepad* there is "New Window" under File. 2) You can have as many Notepads as you want, just don't forget to move them from their spawn locations. 3) File > Open individually on them. 4) Profit

Another great alternative! Thanks so much Mr. B

Thank you verry much!!! This is so helpful, effective and easy to understand! And it saved all my files!!! Thank you!!!

Thank you so much for this video! You do not know how grateful I am.

Thank you so much for saving my data which was almost gone during my fresh installation

I'm giving this E:\windows>notepad.exe command but it won't open. Like in yours

Thank you! I don’t know what I would have done without this!

Is there a way to use any of my internal drives as the backup instead of an external HDD?

hi i was able to reach command prompt but then i realize my drive is gone.. this was a really helpful tutorial but i guess my hard drive really broke.. ;(

Thanks man! this is the only one that I find really easy

if i copy all C files is it include all application windows then when i paste into new windows will restore all application windows the old one? appreciate your answer thanks

Thanks dude! I couldn't have done it without you!

I'll pray for you everyday! 🙏 u saved a lot of my time

What a legend, absolutely saved my life

I respect your video because it is so genuine but this is really a tricky method...

Thank you so much 🙏 you saved my career.😃 love from India 🇮🇳