Soothing...umm...When Windows does this, it usually means only your settings are in danger, not your files. Had this once or twice, too. Not fun. At all. As for finding them again if the worst happens...do you save them in the "My Documents" folder or some other place? I'm asking because the "My Documents" folder might get switches with a new one and the old one is a couple directories away. It's like when all of Lois's stuff got moved from Apartment 105 to 501.
As for the backing up: If the external storage doesn't work, go and buy a thumbdrive or two and do regular backups of your files. One week on the first thumbdrive, second week on the other one, then back to the first one for the third week. Personally, I'm using one of the synchronized cloud storages (google, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc) for my fics to get an off-site storage in case of really bad damage. That's aside from regular backups. (and since they're available on the Inet anyway, I'm not concerned with potential privacy issues for those )
Michael
