Advice on how to output to a file whilst preserving formatting for later viewing? (Windows)

[Dev-Sharbel]

Hello,

I'm trying to output to a text file via a pipe (> path/to/file.txt) but the problem is that some symbols are getting changed, and so if I cat the file they are changed.

The problem is with the symbols used by the tree option to show depths, the vertical and horizontal lines:

Any advice on how I can preserve those symbols/ remove them/ replace them?

I'm operating on Windows 10, and the reason I'm doing this is to be as sort of a 'ledger' for my HDD just in case it ever dies. The content on it is not that important (games I no longer play mostly, but too nostalgic to delete), but it would be nice to have a ledger of the files so that I can re-download them in case the worst happens.

Thank you for anyone helping, and apologies if I broke any guidelines without knowing it, this is my first time starting a discussion.