Sorry about the trouble Larry.
Had a wipe out of the HD years ago that took 2 weeks to recover from. Dell went down, hard drive failure. Under warranty. Dell came out, replaced the hard drive, reinstalled to factory specs. Big smile from the rep. We are fixed!!
Then the nightmare of reauthorizations, rebuilding everything from ground zero.
Maybe missing some of the fine print here, but promised to Allah that this would never happen again. Rock solid security has been a complete clone of the hard drive to an external drive. I use Acronis, but other freebies exist that work as well.
I keep a hard disc of my computers stashed away in a closet. Drag them out and reclone complete if some major upgrade. Has been a flawless approach that has bailed me out many times. Nothing the hard disc can fail that can't be fixed. Maybe the only flaw is the clone takes you back to the last clone. I don't do incrementals and maybe should.
John