My "routine" for many years now has been to use a new, bigger drive for the reinstall. The old drive immediately becomes a "backup" that remains untouched until I'm real sure I don't need anything it contains.

This usually happens when I need more space, but with big drives being real cheap, my boot/program drive is now 1TB and I don't keep any data on it. Ought to be good till it hits MTBF.