So little backstory here… my husband has always been into computers, gaming ect and actually those are some of the first commonalities we both possessed and bonded over (and no I am not saying that it’s all we have cause it’s just not) yesterday after upgrading an SSD I’d bought him that he had been wanting, something went wrong and he has lost all music, games, documents, info and precious memories including windows 10 itself? (but I do not know computers like he does, he built mine and has upgraded it for me every year for a gift) but he has just given up on computers? says he is just done, it’s been killed for him slowly over the past 4 years or so, he is still enthusiastic towards me and my loves of course.. but that’s not what I am asking this for, I am worried about how giving up such an important and loved piece of himself might effect him and asking the men and husbands out there.. what can I do for him right now? I’ve reassured him twice that his thoughts of me leaving or being upset that he wasn’t into computers anymore was not true, and that I was here no matter what, even hugged him and told him it’s all going to work out, I just, I’m lost about what I could do that might make his day a bit better?
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Thanks in advance for any advice!
7 comments
First: if the data loss was caused because he formated his old SSD instead of the new one (been there, done that) he can still recover the files. When someone formats the data, it only marks the data as deleted, but doesn’t overwrite/erase it, so there are programs that can look behind the “marked as deleted” tag and recover the files. The more he writes on this disk less he can recover, because it will start writing over what he had, so it is important that he stops writing on the disk right now to be able to recover as much as possible.
Second: maybe this is a good oportunity for him to delve into data security. For example “RAID” can be used to have data distributed on multiple disks, so even if one disk fails there will be no data loss. Also backups are important even if you have RAID, as something can happen to the entire RAID array (as an example a fire burns down the PC), so keeping regular backups on a second location will help him not lose data even if there is a catastrophic failure.
Third: About what you can do for him, just be there. Give him time to process his feelings (after he stops overwriting the data), and listen to him. After he deals with recovering all he could you can see if there are any files that he couldn’t recover that you still have, but right now he may benefit more from your empathy than from your effort.
I went through something similar. I kept getting angry tryna fix my pc or 3d printer or anything really and would give up. The thing my gf did I that I didn’t realize she was doing was having me fix little things. Her laptop wouldn’t charge or her internet was out. She found little things that I could fix to help me get over the things I couldn’t fix.
I’ve gone through this. Lost a lot of 4K videos because of an accidental installation of Linux in the wrong partition.
I know what my wife did, and I appreciated her. A lot.
If your husband is actively working on it, chances are he will get a workaround. He will appreciate a lot of silence because times like these warrant a lot of thinking. He might appreciate maybe his favourite food, with you on his side, or some lonely time in his “man cave”.
Trust me, when my wife just stays with me without offering any (unsolicited) help, just a kind smile from her was reassuring. I lost the data, but eventually realized my wife and my life with her was worth more.
Men are just wired differently.
Not a pc story, my best friends dad loved cars. He put his heart and soul into a Monte Carlo ss of frame build. Did drag and drives, burn out comps, car shows you name it. Well someone stole it, he cried his eyes out for three days, sold his garage and tools and never worked on a car again.
He’s grieving his library. It’s hard to see it that way, but imagine a library he had built for years and years, treasures that he may not have written, but which he read, mastered, took notes on, taught, and learned about himself with. All gone in an instant. He’s not ready to build another library yet. He needs time to mourn the loss of this one.
As he is grieving, avoid platitudes. “It’ll all be ok” is the same as saying losing it doesn’t matter. Spend time with him.
as a husband: on top of already hearing reassuring words, I know I’d appreciate a daily blowjob from my wife as well, for reassurance purposes…
Go to somewhere that specialises in data recovery. Chances are that it’s still al there