When I only had 1 computer, I couldn’t risk it turning into a brick. Now I can. But this is a low priority project.
Trust me... You won’t brick it. Just have to make sure your BIOS is set so that it will boot from a USB external OS. Have to make the image on a stick to test even that function first. Once you do have it booting from an external OS the Linux will cure all. EVERYONE needs the very reliable external Linux stick to save their files off from a crashed MS drive. It just works... As long as the drive it not broken it always works my friend...