I just keep my data on an OS that doesn't require regular reinstalls.
Preach it, brother. There's two PCs on my desk: on one I've recompiled the system compiler, the system C library, the windowing system, and the desktop environment several times this year and it's got an uptime of 200 days. On the other I've got an uptime of 2 days because I needed to upgrade its ASN.1 parser and that somehow required a reboot.

Peter