My old Windows notebook has had several fits recently. It hard crashes and then keeps re-crashing during boot. Eventually it starts and I quickly take a backup. At least my Linux notebook is not having conniptions. And Linux is much easier to work with.
One file I would miss if it ever got lost is my notes file. Over the last year and a half I have been using TiddlyWiki to help me store and search all the brief notes I used to keep in a text file. A TiddlyWiki is still a single file, but via the magic of JavaScript in a browser it is really a dynamic document. I like TiddlyWiki a lot: tagging, time based sorting, incremental search, and linking all mesh together. I'm reminded of the design of the early Palm Pilots which showed clarity and consistency leading to highly functional devices for their time.