I can't stress too much the need for backups, backups, and more backups.
Both of my 11-year old Windows 7 machines have suffered hard drive failures. When the mechanical hard drives failed, I replaced them with Solid State Drives (SSDs.) And then I restored the drive from my backup. Took a couple of hours each time.
However, if you don't have BACKUPS, you are totally out of luck. One hard drive failure (it's not a matter of "if" but "when") or (God forbid) a house fire, and you could lose years worth of work, pictures, videos, family memories, etc.
Get set up with I-drive, Carbonite or some other online backup service that backs up your data OFF-SITE. If it saves you just one time, it's all worth every dime of the cost.