I feel like these are just growing pains. I mean I’m sure people will argue about to defederate or not for as long as the fediverse exists, but I imagine it’ll become background noise as people get accustomed to what the fediverse is and isn’t.
The fact that this level of choice exists, both for operaters and for users is a big part what makes these places stand apart from reddit and it’s ilk.
Sorry about your data loss.
I self host an instance of nextcloud on a headless machine in my home. It gives the benefits of typical cloud based services, but you control the storage. And if you sync with at least one other machine you have a full backup besides.
Of course no solution is perfect. This requires extra time, effort, and hardware. And having my data in one physical location has it’s own risks. But I still prefer it.
So, something to consider if you or whoever is reading this isn’t aware of that option.
It sounds like your ask is for a recommendation to back up personal files from disparate locations to a server.
I use a self hosted Nextcloud instance for this purpose.