You must be doing something wrong if reinstalling your OS causes you to lose anything important. For starters it helps making your /home directory a separate partition.
Re:Chrome OS has stalled out
by yjftsjthsd-h on Friday January 03, 2020 @11:07AM
(#21947082)
Does Crostini play nice with a separate /home ?
The Chromebook is also a great way to get out of supporting friends and family with technical issues. It's an affordable device and my tech support has been limited to getting it setup with the printer. (Though cloud printing is being killed later this year IIRC.)