Preserving Data Before HDD Wipe

I'm having tons of issues with my computer at home and installing clean, stable versions of Windows. Basically, Windows 10 has a been a disaster, and what I thought was a fresh install on a new SSD just made it worse. 

I tried moving a lot of old files onto said SSD, and now the brand new Windows 10 install on the SSD is corrupt. 

All I want, and I think it's pretty easy, is a piece of software that will search through a given drive and pull out anything that isn't associated with windows. That leaves you with only personal files. I can then move those files over to a storage drive, and wipe the boot drives clean. 

Is there such a product? 

No, system resort and reset has been a joke. Windows wants me to have restore point and an "online verison of windows" in order to be able to use system restore. I can't figure out how to just simply "reset" and keep my personal files, either, but the one time I stumbled upon the option, the reset install failed. 

Copying C:\Users basically excludes all the standard Windows software (Which is mostly in C:\Windows and C:\Program Files), unless you placed any user data directories in the drive root yourself.

Ok, so lets say I do that. I get everything in one place. 

I've got a working version of Windows 7 on drive 1. A dead version of Window 10 Pro also on Drive 1. 

I've got a corrupt version of Windows 10 Home on Drive 2. 

I'm going to wipe drive 2 and reinstall. 

I want to keep Windows 7 on Drive 3. Is there some way to back up just Windows 7 from Drive 1 to Drive 3? And leave the dead version fo Windows 10 Pro on Drive 1 to be wiped?

So it sounds like you have a dual-boot setup on drive 1. If that's correct, yes you can back up just Windows 7 from Drive 1 to Drive 3. The easy way to do that is to use a partition copying tool to copy all the partitions except the one containing Windows 10 from Drive 1 to Drive 3, and then possibly expand the Windows 7 partition afterwards.

If you only want to keep the license, you can extract the license key from the OS and reuse it (but only on the original hardware if it's an OEM install). Also keep in mind that Win7 licenses that were used for the free Win10 upgrade are no longer valid for Win7.

Right. That's why I don't want to have to reinstall Win7. I want to keep the OS in working order because it's surprisingly stable through all these Win10 shenanigans. 

I do however, want to blow away that troublesome older Win10 that I've got on another drive. I kept it around because I'm always worried about missing some personal files and they end up deleted. 

I used the free version of macrium reflect to mirror a dying Win7 install to a different HD, and then again after the OS was updated to Win10 and I wanted to move to an SSD. It worked fine. I found the procedure on the web, but I did find one change (probably due to the guide using an old version of macrium), you need to adjust the target partition size before copying (the guide implies that you can do it after).

I think your first priority is to get Drive 2 stable with a good load of Windows 10. Not sure why it isn't working for you. I have found that when I do a clean and reload of a hdd I need to leave Windows a few days to just process updates. With many many restarts. If I try to add files and stuff quickly, the updater and windows gets confused. Usually it gets stuck on attempting update #blah blah infinite times. The only way out is to format the drive and fresh reload windows.

Even when they reimage my work laptop it takes two days of them sitting on update duty. 

After windows settles down after two or three nights. I add my core software and update them over 48 hours. Then I have a stable setup. 

It is a long process but I found it is the faster and less painful method. 

Then I would use drive 1 as a child drive. I take a day to scour it, copy paste everything I want to drive 2.

Using the backup function of Windows 10 is one way to at least ID files. I usually know where my files are and accept that some odd one may get lost. It happens. Nothing to sweat. Transferring files used to take a full weekend but modern transfer rates mean I can do it in half a day or so. 

If I were you I would copy everything from each drive to the storage drive. Don't try to sort out the Windows vs Non windows on corrupt drives. Just get the data to a good drive and then set aside time to manually filter it.

I keep my files stored in only three places. But if you have scattered files you could search for:

*.doc

*.xls

*.PPT

*.drg

*.PDF

*.jpg

*.mp3

I think you can get Windows Explorer to search for any image file type or any video file type. So you don't have to know all the extensions. 

Microsoft actually has a profile backup and transfer tool that is free to download.  Basically wraps your files, folders and registry entries up into a compressed file that you can more easily move around, etc.

How old I the computer? I have an older Asus laptop (64bit i7 machine) and it will not fun win10. It slowly causes the HDD to loose its mind untill it will not boot. Went back to a fresh install of win7 and it works fine.