@jernej__s @prism

Totally understand the goal of "set and forget". I love set and forget.

But for critical path things, I personally find that a weekly routine of checks is a good thing to do. YMMV, but I was just pointing out to people that this works well for me. (And likely will work well for the unsophisticated computer users who are likely to have developed such non-computerized routines in their lives, which are the people we were originally talking about.)

100% OneDrivification is classic enshittification making things worse by drawing people into the prison walls.

(Another example is the fact that this kind of hand-driven "backing up texts" is to my observation nearly impossible. - if anyone knows of how to do this easily, I would love to hear it.)

@jernej__s @prism

That's one nice thing about an external HD. You should be able to see that the files actually got copied over. When in doubt you can even check ot on another computer.

@prism

I'm so sorry. For everyone reading this - make local backups of everything you care about on an external hard disk. They are not hard to use and they are not expensive.

Make a weekly habit of copying them over.
Unplug the external HD when not in use.

SyncToy (still available, still works fine) is easy to use and fast. It's from Win7. But you do not even need it. Just make a weekly habit of backing files up locally. Do it as part of your weekly house cleaning chores.

This has saved my a** so many times through computer crashes, Windows resets, and all the rest of life's messiness.