Data Hoarder

I have daily image backups of the OS drives with a history of 60-90 days.

my Windows is also stable, except when the SSD kills itself upon a sudden power loss...

I've pointed my Windows user folders to a separate data partition since at least the WinXP days and on a separate HDD altogether since probably Win7, when SSDs started to become more mainstream and affordable and I started using SSDs for Windows and program installs.

I’m not a Windows user but my data is sync’d between two different devices
If/When one device fails, I fall back to the other device
Also, my data is backed up to the cloud

I use cloud storage for most of my documents. My NAS runs a daily job to pull down any updates. Once a month it encrypts everything and sends it up to B2. I definitely have room for improvement there and need to look at moving to daily differentials or incrementals. I'm also probably moving to glacier, unless B2 comes up with something comparable.

The only thing I do locally is video editing, because pushing lots of 4K over my 300/300 FIOS connection is an exercise in extreme patience. But once I'm done, I back that up to the NAS. From there a separate job encrypts and backs it up to B2.

So if my Windows drive got obliterated today, I wouldn't lose anything worth saving. I'd just have to deal with a reinstall.

Anyone else here instinctively take measures to hedge against windows unreliability??

Yes, I install Linux.

More helpful advice, I separate my data from my machine (or at least I am working too). I should be able to reinstall my OS without altering or touching my data.

have used windows 7 to upgrade to now 10 on my computer since 2016 daily and usually on 24/7. Had power outages suddenly with updates pending and still going strong.

you must be doing something wrong.

My data does not even live on the same device as my Windows OS. At least most of it. This makes swapping between PCs and Backups just easier.

I must say WIndows works mostly fine for me. Yes it definitely has some bugs but the last time I had to reinstall my own machine was in the Windows 7 days. Depends also on what hard and software you use though and how well versed with troubleshooting you are.

I mean I've literally never had windows fail for something that wasn't ultimately my fault but still to keep safe I just keep my main OS and games on my M2 SSD and everything else goes on regular SATA SSDs or HDDs in my system that way if somehow windows does get completely fucked to the point where I can't fix it I can just wipe that SSD and reinstall Windows and its games without worrying about my data on the rest of the drives being affected

And of course all my important files are backed up to my NAS and/or Dropbox

Does anyone else arrange their data in a way that protects against the inevitability of a windows install failing??

No...I arrange it against the potential of the OS install failing. No OS is infallible or immune to you or some bad other thing happening. I wouldn't put my data on the same partition of a Linux install either- I wouldn't put it on the same disk even, if I could avoid it, just like on Windows. If for no other reason than historically, having all your stuff on the same disk as the OS could cause really significant performance impacts. It's less of an issue with solid state storage, but it's still there, to say nothing of storage density of hard disks vs solid state.

Plus, depending on what you are doing, it's very possible that your OS disk is the most active one in your system, so it's going to potentially have wear related problems much sooner than your data disks.

Never had an install fail. Well. I suppose it has out of the box, but I notice any issues before I commit to the install. If it’s acting up, reformat before your data ever shows up on the OS drive.

Personally keep all my data off C drive as well, but that’s because it’s an NVME SSD that’s purpose is strictly OS and gaming.

I have computers that I've had the same copy of Windows on it for 5 years and never had a problem. This really sounds like a hardware problem to me. Possibly a ram issue that only pops its head up rarely. I actually own a computer repair store so I have had experience with some of this.

simple. disable windows update.

if you want to update for some reason (features maybe?), backup before you update. after updates are completed, disable windows update again.

I'm on a Mac. Actually never had to reinstall my OS (usually install once when the computer is new). I still keep my actual data separate from the system installation disk/ device. It's just the smart thing to do.

But maybe I'm too old-school… back in the Amiga days we had a write-protected system floppy disk (aka the "Workbench" boot disk) and then we kept our actual data on some other (writable) floppy disks. I moved that mentally over. Now I shuffle hard disk drives instead floppies, but the concept is basically the same. :)

Always consider the OS drive to be temporary.