I had libre office installed on this laptop but then the hard drive crashed and it had to be replaced and they couldn’t back anything up. And now the laptop is pretty much brand new again. So is there some sort of way to get my documents back through libre office itself?
No. The documents were on the crashed disk and you need it to salvage data.
If you still have it, you may try to mount it with a USB attachment and use various utilities. This requires that a few critical sectors are still contains vaid system information. Be aware that the odds of recovering your files are very low if directory information is damaged. You may try “Ultimate Boot CD” which contains many scavenging utilities or “Fedora Security Lab” bootable DVD.
LO is an “ordinary” application relying on the OS to feed it with file content. So, you can’t do anything with LO alone.
To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!
In case you need clarification, edit your question (not an answer) or comment the relevant answer.
PS: solving your problem depends on OS which you have not named.
The present. Short story.
No.
LibreOffice itself does nothing to create backups on separate storage media. That is your responsibility.
For the future. Longer story.
The answer from ajlittoz provides all information relevant to recovering your old files. All I can do is wish you the best of luck.
Using synchronized cloud storage is not the same as backup, but for your situation it would have saved the day.
Several cloud storage providers are out there. In most cases you get what you pay for:
Generally, you get 5-20 GB of storage space for free, and 200-1000 GB is available at reasonable prices. Additional services (file preview, public sharing, full office suite) are available with some of the products.
Some well known providers: DropBox, Google (G’-disk), Microsoft (OneDrive), Apple (iCloud)
Consider also to keep a backup, isolated from the synchronized storage. It may be as an unsynchonized folder on the same cloud service as long as there is the option to select which cloud folders you want to synchronize to computer. Most services I have seen provide that option.
Synchronized folders are not backup because they are vulnerable to things like bad edits, accidental deletion and crypto-malware.
If you don’t want your personal files hosted outside (the cloud solution), you can increase physical reliability by configuring your storage as RAID. My desktop is thus equipped with 2 1-TB disks instead of a single 2-TB (as proposed by the shop) and I configured them as RAID-1. I am thus better protected against disk crashed. I am still vulnerable to personal mistakes (which are addressed backup unsynchronised folders in @keme’s answer).
Usually, laptop have room for only one disk drive and the RAID option is not available. Recent laptops have both an SSD and a traditional disk. For reliability, you can replace the SSD by another disk and configure RAID. You lose some speed (but an acceptable ratio) and gain reliability.
I don’t store vital data on my laptop. It is used as a mobile device with only the necessary file for travel. It is backed up/synced on a dedicated set of folders on the desktop.