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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1013 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 15, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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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.

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