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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1317 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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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?

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!

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