Q: but it is still amazing how easy it is to hit the wrong directory and overwrite a whole scene :o (i only lost part of a draft render but this is still cause for concern)
A: that was one of the main reasons i turned away from blender, years ago. But, now i've returned to it in a different light, and i embrace it because of it's vastly powerful scriptability. So what i do is this: the default render folder is the temp folder. those files will disappear soon anyway. As part of the render process, i have an automated process that happens as soon as the render is done, which copies the rendered movie automatically to my preferred folder, and automatically names it according to the time, for example: render20201019203817.mp4