Windows 10 file copy process

[Artie]

So for past week i've been wondering how does windows 10 copy files.
i've backed up like a terabyte of data on my external hard drive and once i wiped my laptop hard drive clean i wanted to restore the files and also re organize them. Therefore here's my question: When in the destination location you have an existing folder with a certain name, for example "new folder", with certain files in it, if you copy a folder with identical name, that has few identical files in it but also contains new files, when copying into the destination it asks you that the destination contains the folder with identical name so whether you wanna keep both or replace the old one with the new fine. does it just delete the old folder due to same name along with possible different files withing the folder and just replaces with the new one, or replaces files in the folder?
i'm lost xD

 

[Bighorn]

If I read the question correctly, copying a Folder and its contents to another drive with the same Folder name generally merges the data but there'll be lots of confirmations to do. Moving the Folder will do the same but then delete the original. One can Copy the original Folder into the destination Folder as a subFolder with the same name but that takes more storage space.

 

[Norton]

You said you backed up all of your data to the external HD. If so, then all the data on the external drive should be current? If this is the case you can delete the original folder on your laptop and drag the (backed up) folder over from the external HD to the laptop to avoid duplication of data.

 

[Artie]

yeah, i just am trying to figure out da wae on how to manage everything without duplicating files or folder and without data loss.