partitionator

I've had things happen to old versions of Windows that have completely blown the system installed to the C: drive.

This was definitely a thing. You can recall an artifact of folk proof in this detail, by recalling a lot of more technical users and professional IT/desktop support staff in computer labs using C: as a system drive, and D: as the work area containing user files, even if it was a single user machine. Losing the C: partition was a bad burn, bad enough that you didn't let it happen twice.

Years later, even in the Vista days, I had a partition destroying error from a truly innocuous action (like renaming some file; and that NOT being just a coincidence, but a repeatable error with Google results), and had a flabbergasted flashback to a prior C: drive implosion, that reminded me why you always divide the bootable system install off to its own untouched C: partition, and always only put the things you care about on the D: drive, and create lots of backups.

This was real. Never touch C: and don't trust it. Never put anything that matters in the C: partition.