I always separate my Main Drive into at least 2 Partitions C-D— and so on —- Windows Programs on C — Data on D —-
Always yes Always have a Image File available —- even if it’s not current you can use it as a starting point instead of starting over—- Lately after I build a machine I’ve been cloning my entire drive and then use the D partition as my Data Backup drive —- several of my machines let you boot from any drive you have installed
It really SUCKS starting over with nothing
If you haven’t överwritten”any files. You should be able to retreive.
Files on a normal delete are still there.(until overwrite).
Unless you did a DEEP format.
Whoops sorry. You formatted.
When you get it up again. A good time to update.
I use a 250SSD for Win 10 and working programs only.
Plus I only Update Individual drivers manually.
From the manufacturers of the programs.
Not in bulk.
With a 2 Terra 7200 External for everything else. On both.
Did use a 120 SSD for 5 or 6 yrs first. Wife’s PC still has.
My Lappie SSD is a “Flash drive” I believe,
Not a Physical drive, but works fine for near 2 yrs so far.
Looks like a card of RAM. and cheap as.
If you did a free Win 10 from 7, originally.
You CAN do it again as your ID is in your Bios.
It does see you.
and UNtick the Auto Updates for your own good.
They transfer all sorts of crap in there.
Have fun.
I reset my Win 10 every coupla months.
Keeps the lappie cleaner. and it only a toy.
For me.
I was able to restore my system to an image I made six months ago.
I had to do (another) fresh install of Win7 because that's what I had when the image was made.
So I don't have to start from scratch!
I lost six months of progress on the C drive, but that's so much better than starting from scratch. 
That’s why aside from programs that I’d install afterwards, I’d keep ALL data off the main drive, and push it to external drives. If I go grabbing files for anything, within a few days to a week tops, they’re off the main drive.
Convenience is nice, but losing things and not being able to get them back sucks way more.
I do something similar.
The C drive has Windows, most programs that I install, and not a whole lot else.
Stupidly, I put some stuff on the desktop, which is on the C drive.
I think that's mostly what I lost.
Months ago I fully overhauled an old laptop for my brother: motherboard cooling upkeep, battery replacement, RAM + SSD upgrade… and a Windows 10 fresh install from an old ISO image downloaded via eMule. The latter point does not really matters; the only difference versus an ISO from an official source is the crack it may contain by default, which is easily uninstalled after first boot and pointless anyway. Such hardware was running Windows 7 before the upgrade, on its old hard drive. The fresh install and upgrade to latest version was of course seamless.
I really do not get why you couldn't “fresh install”. Unless you wanted to get an activation from Windows 7, that is. A single machine valid license can be gotten for ≈$5. O:)
:-)
It wasn't for lack of trying.
I simply tried (repeatedly) to do a fresh install of Win10, and no dice.
Off a Win10 dvd or bootable usb stick? If so that’s odd since I’ve never had a problem with a clean install of Win10 onto a physical or virtual computer from an iso file. Out of curiosity were you getting an error message of some sort or was it failing at some point in the install?
A Win10 DVD.
I don't remember if I received an error message.
Honestly using Windows 7 for a daily driver is a mistake waiting to happen these days. Use Windows 10 or migrate to *nix.
That's nice.
My approach uses multiple simplified backups. I keep all my personal data in a single, size manageable folder of a few GBs. That folder is installed in all the devices I have (smartphones included), and is copied from source to target device every now and then. I also copy it onto a USB disk if I feel like that. Works really well, all my relevant data is secure. From time to time I may find some old file on an old disk to have a laugh and purge.
P.S.: Windows XP FTW!!! :-))
I got my desktop working the way I like it. 
It took me almost four days.
I also have the computer set up to do backups on a regular basis, so I won't have to go through (all of) this again.
If you’ve learned anything—- Have several Backups and Most importantly —- Have a Recent System Image before updating Drivers/Software
I’ve had trouble more times updating Video drivers anf Quickbooks —- with an Image you just start over in about 15 minutes
Updating software or drivers is something which needs to be taken seriously. First of all you don't need to update every time those morons tell you. For example they're for some time now updating browsers every month which, in my opinion, is @#$% ridiculous. They can stick all those updates right where the sun doesn't shines. Peace of mind for myself.
A good advice: do not update more than one driver at a time. They're critical system components which can make your system unstable or refuse to boot. Upgrading them in squads is a bad idea. And always make sure whatever stuff the driver handles works properly after the upgrade.
:-)
Oh, I've learned my lesson.
I'm not updating any drivers unless I have to.
With a new system, I'll update the video driver for sure, and anything else that's required to work one-at-a-time.
To minimize such loss of work I have the important folders with Online space automatically synchronized, so if I work on drivers as soon as an file get updated its online saved within about 30 seconds
Of course regular backups on a 4 TB HDD and various old HDDs from 200-500GB which have older backups
Last resort are six 6GB magnetic Iomega tapes, as well as stuff saved on my server
anyways I also did buy a few new SSDs since I bought my Laptop almost 5 years ago
started with 2 250GB one as C and one as important data drive, plus 1TB HDD
then 250GB and 500GB plus HDD
now it is 250GB, 1TB SSDs and 1TB HDD, but the old 500GB SSD I simply filled with important data and put in a drawer
I ordered last week a complete new PC, first time after a lot of years going back to a desktop PC
The old laptop runs still on its first Windows 7 installation but it has some bugs and runs not fast anymore, even if the hardware is relative potent with an I7 4 Core CPU and 8 Threads up to 2.9Ghz
But putting Windows 10 on this one is not worth it, I will likely restore the original Image of the 250GB SSD as I bought it and then sell it
So I will set up C on a Samsung 970 Pro PCI Express SSD
and migrate the 1TB Data SSD also to that system
I will keep the USB3.0 4TB drive external and likely buy another 4TB server grade internal HDD
I did in the past simply copy everything of the important drive and folders to a backup HDD, as I don’t want to trust any backup software or an image
Next time just remove the hard drive and buy a USB adapter for it. It is cheap and instantly turns the harddrive into an external. All your files will be intact, and your problem will mean nothing in this mode. It works flawless.
Seems more solutions than problems.
At least for the next time.
Trust in Allah butt tie up your camel.
Sorry I’m coming into this late… but I was wondering if you ran an integrity check on the hard drive. It should not have “unraveled” as it did, under normal circumstances. Given how this laptop was originally installed with Windows 7, it’s an old one. And it could be that your disc is suffering gradual degradation. This happened to me. What caused it to fail in a similar way was that a bad sector affected a few system files. I ran a successful repair, but then it happened again and in a worse way. I could not recover. I later discovered that the hard drive was “dying” a slow death of bad sectors.
At this point, SS drives have come down in price so significantly, it can make sense to buy one. Also, truly assess your space usage — you may find you don’t need a large one. I have a 500Gb in one laptop and a 750Gb in another.
Having no backup drive is terrible, these days HDDs and SSDs are so cheap
I have always two very big HDDs that store all big data also the stuff on the SSDs is regularly copied them
One drive is external and only used a few times a year to back up new data from the other big HDD
Also older HDDs I retired from PC use are put in a metal box in my parents house just in case my PC gets stolen or it gets physically destroyed
Really important stuff like driver designs etc. are also in real time backup with online storage space
You get for example from ASUS 5 GB free space (10 GB more if you let 2 friends register over a link), the program stores all your folders you can simply enable in windows explorer
