the old computer that I'm using to make music on is giving up on me before I can complete or save my projects. if you were in this situation, would you try to recreate the progress, or start over from scratch?
not sure if i understand the question.  parts of the question sound like your project crashed and you are considering starting over, in which case i would advise you to learn to save more regularly.  however, other parts of the question suggest that your computer crashes too frequently for it to be possible to save anything, in which case starting again would be incredibly dumb because you are going to lose it again.