import old photos into PS Elements 2020

My old computer just died and my Elements backup was a few months old.  I have access the the files on the old hard drive. Is it better to copy the files directly onto my new computer? when I load them import them into my new Elements, will all the key words and tags still be there?

 

or

Is it better to restore the catalogue from the older backup and try to find any new files that may have been added since the last backup?

By @Royveroakville2011

Reimporting will at best recover your tags, captions and ratings and only if you have regularly and manually chosen to 'write metadata to files'. You'll lose albums, stacks, version sets and more.

So just start with a restore from the latest available backup.

If you can  plug in the copy of your files on another disk as another internal drive, or as an external drive in a USB enclosure, you can import your copies: the already present files (the older ones) will be skipped as duplicates. If your files are already stored in date based folders, that will be easier and faster.