[Padgett]

Well if you have to ask a good set of backups is always something to have.

I grew up with mainframes and always partition my devices (even tablets) into two drives: C: (system) and D: (data).

Windows 7 and later provides a way to keep a full system image (is under File History in Windows 10). I keep a system image of the C: drive and a flat file incremental backup (can use XXCOPY) of the D: drive. I also keep backup copies of all license Keys (including ones stored in the BIOS).

That said I feel that the best defense is to keep anything hostile from executing on my computer. To do that I have EMET set "paranoid", the UAC requiring personal acknowledgement before anything unknown can execute or affect system areas, and usually run as a plain user with a separate admin account.

Now that I no longer have to support a major corporation, there is no real reason to keep using Windows, I just understand it better than other OSs and have a number of apps that do not run anywhere else (like an email routine that does not run anything active without permission & warns of anything other than text).

Have some friends who use nothing but Linux and I use Kali for analysis & have both Fedora and Ubuntu, just find linking to my Android phone and such easier in Windoze.