The laptop was stubborn but alive, its fan sighing like a tired animal. A single folder sat on the desktop, named “HOUSEKEEPING—DO NOT DELETE.” Curiosity overrode caution. Inside, among invoices and scanned manuals, was a logbook of decisions: times when drives had been split and merged, when data had been rescued from failing sectors, when a family photo archive had been resurrected after a power surge. Her uncle had been a quiet problem-solver, a fixer of things people treated like lost causes.

Even with legitimate software, partition operations carry risk. Use: