Copying files from Windows to dedicated directories in your Ubuntu
When booted into Ubuntu (an installed system or a live system booted from USB) you have the Linux tools for mounting file systems and copying files.
First, Windows should not be hibernated or semi-hibernated alias 'Fast Startup'. So either turn that off or reboot from Windows (and boot directly into Ubuntu). Otherwise the Windows file system will be in a 'dirty' state which can cause problems to copy.
If not automatically mounted, you can check the device id for the Windows partition (usually the biggest partition with the NTFS file system). In a wide terminal window (pull a corner to make it big enough)
lsblk -f
lsblk -m
and then mount it
sudo mount -o rw,user,umask=0000 /dev/sdXN /mnt
where X is the device letter, for example a and N is the partition number for example 2
or if an nvme drive
sudo mount -o rw,user,umask=0000 /dev/nvmeMnpN /mnt
where M is the nvme card number, usually 0, and N is the partition number for example 2.
Then decide where to copy, You may want to create a dedicated directory, for example oldwin1 in your home directory
cd
mkdir oldwin1
First check that it seems to copy what you want to where you want it. Please notice the trailing slash of the source directory
# sudo rsync -Havn source/ target # for advanced backup of Linux file systems
You do not want all files the belong to the Windows operating system, but only your personal files, so identify each directory tree, path1-to-top-of-directory-tree-to-copy ..., that you want to copy
Here we use another set of options. First check with a 'dry run' that things seem to work correctly in your case
rsync -rtvn "/mnt/path1-to-top-of-directory-tree-to-copy/" ~/oldwin1
When things look good you are ready to copy. Remove the option n from the command line and start the process
rsync -rtv "/mnt/path1-to-top-of-directory-tree-to-copy/" ~/oldwin1
You may have more than one such path, path1 path2 etc to copy to ~/oldwin1 ~/oldwin2 etc. Use a separate rsync command for each of them, so if necessary
cd
mkdir oldwin2
rsync -rtv "/mnt/path2-to-top-of-directory-tree-to-copy/" ~/oldwin2
etc.
When the copying is finished, you can unmount the Windows partition
sudo umount /mnt
This copy process should preserve the directory structure and modification times of the files, and make your userID owner of the files.
The details about the options are explained in the manual
man rsync
-r, --recursive recurse into directories
-t, --times preserve modification times
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
Edit: If problems to read
If there are problems, because your regular user is not allowed to read the files from Windows, you can use elevated permissions with sudo
Dry run:
sudo rsync -rtvn "/mnt/path1-to-top-of-directory-tree-to-copy/" ~/oldwin1
Copying:
sudo rsync -rtv "/mnt/path1-to-top-of-directory-tree-to-copy/" ~/oldwin1
This will make root owner of the files, and you may want to fix that
sudo chown -R "$USER":"$USER" ~/oldwin1
