Good point. And I do like to try new things out on virtual machines. I have several primary systems set up, Windows 10, Windows 7, and Linux builds. I have a “Hyper-V switch” set up with an icon on my desktop so that I can use Hyper-V Manager and VM-Workstation on the same machine.
We have three other working laptops, one is a little 10” ultra-portable which cost less than $100 a couple years ago. another is my previous laptop which is literally falling apart mechanically, after I replaced the broken hinges the case started cracking around the new ones. The other is my wife's which is mostly off-limits to me. So I have become dependent on my newish laptop working. My old one was easy to pop a different hard drive in, but this one is kind of a pain to get the case apart.
Experimenting in a virtual machines helps to keep my newish laptop from getting screwed up. But with Microsoft's assistance it happens occasionally anyway.
I have a 256 GB Thumb Drive that I use for backups.
I should probably buy another and use it a a secondary level b/u device.