So, I got the power supply and put it in to Nancy's old PC, and... nothing. Looked like the fan on the CPU wasn't moving (important, since those things can burn up quick) so I replaced it, and still... nothing.
So, rather than buy a new motherboard and other hardware, I take out the three hard drives and buy a device to connect them via USB to my other PC, to take off the data. No response from any of the drives. Okay, I think, maybe this new device isn't trustworthy, and I hook up the drives directly to the PC in the music room, and... nothing :(
It turns out all three of Nancy's old hard drives were fried when the power supply blew. They would have been my last link to her, and contained all her photos and videos, emails and documents. I was really looking forward to seeing what she had been up to right before she died, and backing them up permanently. And now they are gone; a second death, in a way. I broke down after discovering this and cried the entire night. Even Hunter couldn't console me. I'm a little better about the situation, two days later, but still it just doesn't seem fair. I had hoped that data would be a link back to her, somehow, and a way to remember her and even learn something new about her and what she cared about after she was gone. Now they are gone, as well, and I feel pretty shitty about it. Can't she get a break? Please? Even after she dies, life still comes up lemons for her. It's just not fair. What's next, the house burning down?
My only hope is that she was good at creating backups, but odds are the only backups that exist were made around 2006 or so. I'm glad it's not completely lost, but I'll never know about her final moments online, or in email, or anything, and it's tough to let that go without a fight.
Technically, the data could still be available. There are data recovery services out there, but they are primarily for businesses, as they charge anywhere from $800-$5000 to get the data back. And that's per hard drive. I just don't have that kind of money unless I took out a loan, and something tells me that I shouldn't, even though I could. Because of that, I feel like I'm giving up. I mean, there's a *way* to get it back, but due to money, I can't do it.
It's frustrating, like how I felt about Samantha the cat earlier when she was having health problems: is letting something die because you can't afford it really doing "all you can do?" Is letting irreplaceable personal memories and data be lost because you can't afford to bring it back really doing "all I can do?"
