Maybe store it up in a source control software somewhere so you can pull it down again if it does? Thats what I do. Then when I bork my system I can just pull my dots down and relink them.

Yeah just create a git repo or something, or if you think that's overkill for your needs you can just make sure to backup the config to a external ssd or usb.

@harbard Keep backups of your entire home folder. That way if it happens again you can quickly restore. You could use a systemd timer or cronjob to run rsync at a set interval & have it copy everything to a flash drive you leave plugged in, or maybe better to copy, then compress, then delete the copy once you have an archive. That way you can keep multiple backups as .tar.xz files or something, & if your SSD suddenly fails in the middle of a backup you'll at least have part of a functioning copy, allowing you to restore the backup just before it & then update from the partial copy.

I wonder what will cause your entire operating system to disappear, could it have actually been a corruption? I had that once & it caused my operating system to be unbootable because the filesystem was damaged & the computer could no longer find everything required to boot. I was able to repair my ext4 partition by using fsck in a live session off of a USB flash drive, then I was able to boot again & I didn't lose anything.