Statistics – basic advice needed

Hi.

I am after some basic guidance on how to change the format of statistics on my blog and how the concept works.
I have been running a blog for nearly four years. The statistics format I had at the beginning I had been very happy with. I am not quite sure what type it was or whether it came preloaded when I started my blog. It look a little like the Jet Pack stats system.
At some point this year this stats system “updated” (I am becoming a little suspicious of this word in the context of computers – it often means “complete change”) and changed the way it presented info and what info it would show. I was invited to accept this upgrade. Because I had the old stats link saved on my browser I stayed with the older format – it had what I wanted.

WordPress invited me regularly to change to the new upgrade: frequently, when I logged on to see my stats, I was offered a feedback questionnaire “why are you continuing with the old system” with multiple choice answers offered, eg a) it is easier, b) I am used to it, c) it is less confusing, etc, etc – I cannot remember it exactly.
A few days ago I gave in to the nagging, deleted my old stats link and went with the upgraded version only to realise, almost immediately, that this was the wrong decision. I cannot now, it seems, interrogate any data, historic or current, in depth. Stats for “days” only go back a month’s worth, “weeks” only let me look at three months of stats, “months” only let me look back 11 months. The “years” section only gives me one lump sum total for each year. I really miss not having the monthly and yearly averages. The new “insights” section tells me nothing that I want to know and the extremely helpful “summary”, which gave me totals for every single month for the last four years and gave me the performance and averages for weeks, months and years, seems to have vanished forever. Of course, I might well have missed this info – its there but I haven’t found it yet – but I don’t think so. Happy to be corrected, however!

Questions:

How can I reset this and go back to the older stats version – is it possible to return to the old ways?! If I was able to go back, have I lost any stats?

But also – I hadn’t realised there were so many different “plug ins” for counting statistics, perhaps it is time to change.

If I wanted to change: can I have 2 or 3 different stat counting plug-ins so I can compare them? Do you have any sense of which plug in would give me all the weeks, months and years data and averages that I want?

Where do old stats go to die? Are they held somewhere? Do some old stats get lost for good if I change over to a system that doesn’t count them? Should I be saving the raw data myself – how would I do that? How can I get and keep all those day, week, month and year stats and summaries that I used to have?

Very grateful for any thoughts

Cheers

Tim