Lost a hard drive suddenly in a storm out of nowhere once 15+ years ago before I was taking it especially seriously and some animations, recorded video files and game dev work down the drain back then but fortunately most of the really important stuff made it through. Now I make it a point to have cloud backup going on my work desktop! You should too. Personally I'm using backblaze but there are many good options out there. You should have a way to back everything up that's important if you can. There isn't really a good excuse not to. The typical IT advice is you ideally should have local backup of all important data (mirroring) plus offsite cloud backup. Three copies of everything across two locations means odds of stuff getting lost for good is very low. Make sure the backup system's automated and will keep up to date with changes with minimal time and fuss.
matthornb.itch.io - asset packs - 3d assets, decals, PBR seamless textures, VFX clips. Many sales on holidays and well over a dozen 5-star ratings to date. Thanks everyone for helping me get this off the ground!