Windows 98 has me so scarred that, decades later, I always assume my computer is going to crash at any memento, and still periodically hit Control + S as an idle twitch.

This must be someone younger than me.

I had a similar occurrence with Windows XP.

Two crashes a couple months apart led me to switching to Linux. I then read up on rsync and using hard links to make incremental snapshot backups. Coupled with doing this over ssh and now I had multiple automated backups.

As my laptop got older, it kept running fine b/c of Linux but I wanted a new laptop. My girlfriend at the time was using said laptop and drinking and said "Oh, do you want me to not drink over your laptop?"

I replied "that laptop has every bit of important data I need backed up in two different locations. Please spill whatever you want on it as that would give me a valid reason to go buy a new one."

Okay you back up your goods. Now how you ever tried to restore <evil grin> ?