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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1296 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 15, 2026

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In defiance of the typical advice to avoid making any decisions for a year, my husband's desktop died while I was getting a backup of the data.

I have gotten the external raids mounted on another system to get them backed up. That leaves me with the internal drives. I don't see a raid card in the machine but I could be wrong. The symptoms of the machine are getting stuck in a boot loop. It dies/restarts at different points so I think it's the power supply. A drive enclosure is significantly cheaper than a replacement 825w power supply. It could be memory, but there's only one module so I can't do the easy test of swapping out memory/sockets to see if the problem goes away.

I don't exactly want to decide to let his system be dead. He was a gamer & also did tons of graphics processing and he babied this thing. But neither my daughter nor I have his use cases and resurrecting this just to shut it down after I get a backup seems pointless. If the internal drives are in a raid my decision is made for me. But if they're not...

This is why they say to not make major decisions for a year. Not just because it's too easy to decide something in the throes of madness, but also because your ability to think just flat out goes out the window.

So. Would you rebuild it? Play one last game of Half Life 2 since he'll never get to play 3 (like there will ever be 3) with his daughter? Or focus on the data and get backups of his photos and digital art and leave the hunk of metal dead like its owner?

Just because nobody else has mentioned it yet, LLMs are very useful for this kind of tech troubleshooting. It can be a bit frustrating dialling it in to the appropriate level and angle of investigation but the shear speed and detail of the replies can make it much more effective than waiting for replies on forums (speaking as a reluctant and unenthusiastic Linux user). Look up the motherboard model and ask it to help troubleshoot why it's getting stuck in a boot loop.

For my part, assuming it's a Windows PC and/or you're a Windows user, Hiren's Boot CD can be a handy tool if you have a spare USB stick. Skim through some YouTube videos if you need to know any more about it, they'll explain it better than I can (or again you could ask an LLM).

Until you mentioned a daughter, I was 95% confident you were gay. Now I'm down to 10% confidence, mostly because of the possibility of adoption.

Oh. Reading along, I just realized he passed away. Sorry. I'm glad you're doing your best to keep his memories alive, and even play into his interests. If my future wife went to such lengths when I was in the grave, I would be very happy about it.

To actually answer your question, I think the data you extracted is worth more than the system itself (at least when it's clearly broken). If your husband was alive, he would probably care more about the fact that you retained the information and the fact you even want to play HL3 with your daughter, rather than the fact that you played it on his old pc. If your daughter wants to keep it, keep it. Otherwise you might feel a little better if you, say, gave away some of the working but unnecessary parts to charity or some eager kid who is friends or family. Thank you for trying, either way.

I've been told (by real life lesbians) I have a dyke aesthetic but that's as gay as I get.

Excess computer gear is definitely getting donated. We have the makings of a Very Nice homelab, especially if someone's interested in playing with VOIP and anything telephony. I'm pretty much all cloud these days and it's going to be hard enough to find someone who's interested in a few full size racks and a mix of equipment that includes 2U servers. I hate to think of this stuff going to scrap, but it may end up that way. (The kid's not interested in hardware & I doubt that'll change. So no need to hang on to it for the inevitable flip back to on-site data centers when everyone realizes VAX, oops, cloud, isn't the end-all.)

Thanks for the input. I'll try for the data on the drives as a first pass.

First thing to do if you haven't already is load the BIOS and reset the configuration. Many enthusiast systems have performance setting options which will attempt to overclock various components, which usually works, but when it doesn't it can cause issues like what you describe. There should be an option to set everything back to normal or safe settings, which might fix the problem all by itself.

Second thing to do is try booting a recovery environment like https://www.system-rescue.org/. If this is successful, you can try to mount the hard disk partitions to copy data to another drive or network share. This won't work if the disk is encrypted, unfortunately. You would be able to test the RAM though - it's one of the boot options on that image. You could also run a few hardware tests, like copying the hard drive blocks to /dev/null to test for read errors.

Another tip that might help you is that if it's a standard ATX power supply, you can try scrounging one from just about any other standard PC. The machine will need no more than around 100 watts just to boot up. The high power requirements only really come into play when working the GPU and CPU hard.

I can't get completely through a boot cycle, which is why I'm leaning towards flakey power supply. It's a dual CPU, wouldn't a low watt psu put stress on that? Sorry, I haven't really played with hardware since I had to put the IRQ jumper on my soundblaster. Swapping out memory is easy, calculating power needs is harder.

I'll dig through the boxes of spare bits and see if there's a power supply in there. Oh! Somewhere in his building o junk there's a fluke. If I find that I should be able to narrow down issues. Thanks for putting me on this line of thinking.

First thing to do if you haven't already is load the BIOS and reset the configuration.

Another reply pointed out, "Motherboards often have raid features built in, but those have also gone out of fashion, because they’re unreliable and often lead to tough data recovery situations at times like this."

But they are the sort of thing that a geek who wanted to squeeze out a little more performance (speaking from experience) might be tempted to turn on, so IMHO the first thing to do is to load the BIOS and record (even if just with a few photos) the configuration, just to make sure there aren't any weird settings like RAID striping that might be necessary to read the drives but might be lost in a reset.

The specs say the motherboard system has a built in raid. But I'm not clear if it was required, and he did use this system for gaming, and he typically used raids for redundancy not speed. OTOH he also did a lot of graphics processing ... yeah, betting going with a drive enclosure isn't going to solve my problem here. Still, worth a first pass.

Are you at all concerned you'll find stuff that will make you think less of him?

My wife isn't technical enough to save my hardware. But I'm wondering if I should set my "personal" files to be at least less obvious or something.

Not at all worried about anything I might find. I was married to him for 30 years. I know everything important about him and there's nothing I would or could find that would diminish my love and respect for him.

FWIW, I appreciate that my husband named his directories rationally so I just have to delete "porn" and won't be accidentally running into it when I'm trying to save family photos from loss.

I personally think it's awesome that you're going through the effort of recovering this, especially given the fact that he created art. I think it'll be worth it - I only asked the question because I don't see the value in digging through his porn stash (if he even has one). Best of luck!

Are you at all concerned you'll find stuff that will make you think less of him?

Forgive me for being blunt, but I think it's important to tell you that I don't think this is any of your business or that this is an appropriate time to ask.

My wife isn't technical enough to save my hardware. But I'm wondering if I should set my "personal" files to be at least less obvious or something.

Given that there's some concern about her finding them I don't believe there's any possible justification for you to save such things locally in the first place. Not trying to beat you over the head with this, especially given the above. It's the conclusion I've arrived at after much soul-searching and I wanted to share. As it stands you're just revealing your preference for which you love more.

... It's not my business (what the fuck?), and that's not what I'm asking. It's a question meant to make OP think about what they want to get from recovering these files. Is there any value to be found in scraping into what might be someone's most private directories? I wouldn't read through my wife's diary unless she expressly gave me permission to after her death.

It's the same concept if he were a nerd who spent a lot of time on his computer. People deserve some privacy, even from their intimate partners, and even in death. And I'll take a hard pass on your judgment about what's appropriate to keep on my personal computer, thanks.

While I wouldn't be quite that harsh and blunt, I do agree. Now's probably not the time to be wondering if he had slightly questionable porn bookmarks or retained pictures of an ex.

First of all, I’m so sorry for your loss.

My opinion is that you should work on getting a backup of his data and not worry so much about repairing the computer. There’s an SOP in IT that you should always focus on data recovery first, and that’s something I try to follow in my personal life. You never know what might be in his disk partition that would be meaningful.

I doubt you’re in a place where the resale value of his computer plays much of a role in your thinking. I don’t know that I would be. I actually don’t know enough about the secondary component market to say whether it would be worth it for that reason to invest in a repair, but of course that depends on what the problem is.

I can’t read a fellow geek’s mind, but I can say that hardware raid with raid cards has gone out of fashion in the consumer enthusiast space. Motherboards often have raid features built in, but those have also gone out of fashion, because they’re unreliable and often lead to tough data recovery situations at times like this.

I’d presume the system uses Windows, in which case my main concern would be not getting bitlockered out of the data on the drive. Microsoft’s hard disk encryption… isn’t great, but it’s persnickety, and often works by only allowing access to the data on the drives from the computer itself, based on hardware encryption keys. If he was using bitlocker, that would definitely make repairing the system as it stands your best option. This scenario would make the SATA-to-USB adapter option unfortunately not viable.

Boot loops could be the power supply (although that’s not really where my mind would go to first) but it could also be a lot of things, of course. Including software issues. Since you’re in that place where you’re dealing with grief and decision making/critical thinking can be impaired, this might be a situation where asking a friend or family member with IT experience, or hiring a reputable PC repair company, would be the right call, even if you have the technical experience to do some troubleshooting yourself. Grief and data loss are two things I wouldn’t want mixed.

I am fortunately not having to worry about money. We'd been planning for his retirement so we were already financially set up to not need his salary, and I have always intended to work until they cart me out of the building kicking and screaming. But everyone should plan for these eventualities. I won't qualify for the social security widows benefit until I'm 60, several years from now. If we'd been a single income household (or if I'd only had a pin money job) and not planned for a potential early death (our daughter's over 20, so if we'd done a 20 year term life insurance policy on him when we had her, it'd be done by now), things could be rough right now. And tough even were I 60, bluntly. If you take it at 60 you're cutting your monthly pay by something like 28% and if you needed to take it at 60 the odds of you having a better benefit to swap to once you're at FRA are pretty low.

Thank you for mentioning the built in raid - that's a feature on his system. I was thinking of a repair company, mostly because we're old enough that most of us who played with hardware haven't in ages beyond bespoke gaming rigs, and we've all been down sizing which means our piles of spares have been whittled away. But since asking anyone else (friends or repair service) to work on the system comes with the non-zero possibility that it gets hosed, I want to do every (non-destructive) thing I can think of first.

Thank you for mentioning the built in raid - that's a feature on his system. I was thinking of a repair company,

DP Xeon (?) is pretty niche for a gaming rig -- it's more of a 'rule of cool' hobby project since about 2015, although I'm still pretty down with it myself. (not for gaming tho)

I think if you can get the BIOS to open (F12, [Del] or some other brand-dependant key on POST) there will be an option showing you whether the board's built-in RAID is enabled -- I don't know your husband, but if he is like me he would not have done this, and slapping the drive in an enclosure will be sufficient. This is all that most 'repair companies' would be up for anyways, and I think USB cages are like $10 on Amazon nowadays? My recommendation is to just do that yourself, unless you see some RAID settings in the BIOS or another system has trouble with the drive -- in which case you might be stuck troubleshooting the hardware a bit. PSU would not be my first guess -- presumably the system was working previously, so I wouldn't think sizing would be an issue?

I have tried to catch it in a boot to get to the bios, so far no luck. I found an external enclosure and the drive didn't mount/wasn't recognized. I'll find another and then check a different drive, too.

I think the system was working previously, but it's a guess. He'd been feeling a bit under the weather before things got bad, so it had possibly been late November since he touched the computer. He asked me to turn it off once he went into the hospital, which was late December, and then it was late January/early February when I first tried to get a backup of it and at that point it didn't boot successfully. The UPS it was on also died sometime during this time period, which is probably also influencing my desire to blame the power supply. Even though all other electronics in the house are fine so I don't think we got hit with a power surge, which even if we did, the UPS should have absorbed it. I'll run through the things I can do, then see if there's a repair company that can do something other than what I've done. And based on the input I've gotten here, I'll consider that good enough.

If you're only trying to get the data off of it, just get a SATA to USB adapter and call it a day, or find a friend who is willing to tie up his PC for a couple days in exchange for a free hard drive. What you're describing could be any number of things and I wouldn't just start throwing parts at it if you're not going to keep the machine. The only caveat here is that you might be able to resell it if it's working, which might not be a bad idea if you consider an 80 dollar power supply a major decision. Also, what's on here that you need? I understand wanting to save his work, but unless you think you're going to look at it from time to time in remembrance, there's a good chance you'll just transfer the data to a new hard drive that will sit in a drawer for the next 50 years.

Edit: I would add that I've had two power supplies fail on me and neither of them did what you described. The machine would start to boot, then shut off. I think. It's been a while, but I don't remember any boot loops. That could still be it, just letting you know my experience.

It was his primary windows system, so it has art and photos on it. We're talking ~15TB if not in a raid. A lot of that would also be dev work, games, and just junk, which I don't need to save, but I want every bit of his photos and art I can save. His first retirement project was going to be making more prints of his favorite digital art & photos, and I expect over time my daughter and I will do just that.

Thanks for the data point. I'm keeping memory in mind, too. If it's the motherboard and the drives are in a raid, I'm SOL for this system. I've gotten backups of all the NAS and external raids, and I've got the SD cards for his cameras. I think without the drives on his computer I'll mostly be losing his newest artwork, which is most likely in an unfinished state. And maybe I'm just making myself feel better.

I would think the data on it is more important than the machine itself. I have a decent gaming rig that I keep up to date. But if it crapped out and I was gone I wouldn't want my wife stressing about getting it working again. I'd possibly want it to go to a friend who might be able to get some use out of it after swapping out the hard drives.

Thank you for the input. As not-a-gamer it's really hard to tell how far babying the gaming rig goes. Y'all spend hours with these things! And care deeply about even peripherals like the perfect mouse and keyboard.

It is a nice keyboard. It's got a nice thunk to it, like the old IBM keyboard. Modern keyboards are garbage.

As a fellow PC owner and husband I would like to echo what cjet79 said. I would not want my wife worrying about maintaining my tools/possessions.

We do care about the quality, but I view them ultimately as tools. And for me a tool that doesn't provide utility is a bad tool.

But that's not the only view on tools, some guys turn them into collectors items, some treat them like status symbols, and some treat them as end goals where they want the best tool for the job but are rarely caught doing the job.

You'd know best how he might have felt about tools. But I'll repeat the sentiment above. Id feel worse if my tools caused stress and uncertainty over any possible course of action my wife might take.

I replied before reading all of the comments, so I'm glad to see others feel a similar way. If I was dead, the fact that my wife kept my data and memories, and tried to play a video game I would like with our child would have meant everything to me.

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