@ Harry ....
Sorry Mate, I got caught up in my own dilemma and overlooked your query on how ACR comes into the equation. Thanks to Hawthy for chiming in.
When I open a NEF file in Photoshop it first defaults to ACR but I can't remember whether I set it up that way or if it's the standard default.
One habit I've got into is to make a copy of the
RAW file to use for PP so I have a clean copy of the original in case of stuff-ups. Another thing I do is to save a .tif file of the finished job before resizing and compressing in case I want to have it printed. I also have most of my files on a separate drive, or two if you count the back-up, and am thinking about using the cloud storage as well