I know this does not help after the fact but a thumbdrive only cost a few dollars. stick it in the usb port every once in awhile and save your files.
also a good rule to follow is this. use 2 computers 1 that goes on the internet at 1 that never does. keep important work in the offline computer. if you need to get something from internet use of thumb drive and then scan it first. if the online computer gets something inside it you can just wipe out the hard drive and start over
That’s actually a good idea. I have an XP and a Win7. The XP could be my off internet computer, but then how do I update it? Microsoft is supporting XP for another couple of years. It updates every Wednesday.
I save everything to an external hard drive. In this case, the same error is also on the external drive.