ultred ragnusen wrote:

I lost my entire HDD due to Microsoft Update bricking my
AMD system, where only God knows why and only God knows how
to recover the data.

After buying a new HDD and installing Windows 10 on it, I'm
trying really hard to not tweak the system (except for the
barest of minimum tweaks that are necessary for
efficiency).

I suspect all my tweaks are things Microsoft Update hated,
so I'm trying /not/ to tweak the new setup but Lord knows,
I need a KISS cascading menu because that stupid Cortana
thing just sucks for too many reasons to elucidate here.

That concern is one reason why I try to work with Microsoft
operating system programs. From the earliest versions of
Windows, I loved to mess with the operating system. After
being smacked down so many times for doing so, nowadays I try
to cope.

If you are concerned about data, the first thing you do is
make a backup copy of the drive. Then you try fixing it.