What preventative maintenance tasks should you perform to make your computer run better? Ken Colburn of Data Doctors has some tips.
Q: What preventative maintenance tasks should I perform to improve the operation of my computer?
A: As with many other items in everyday life, preventative maintenance is the key to avoiding unexpected and expensive repairs.
Imagine driving your car until it breaks down without regularly changing the oil or checking the tire pressure. This can result in huge costs or even stranded on the side of the road in a dangerous condition.
You can avoid both expensive surprises and lost use of your computer if you get into the habit of performing a few basic tasks on a daily basis.
Data loss prevention
If you think about it, it’s not the physical computer that really matters most, it’s the personal data that matters most.
Establishing regular backups is essential, preferably offsite for maximum security. It is certainly possible to use an external backup connected to your computer with software that does automatic backups. But it doesn’t help much in the event of fire, flood, theft, or the ever-growing ransomware threat.
An offsite backup service such as Carbonite offers enhanced threat protection and, combined with a local backup drive, provides three copies of your data for the ultimate backup strategy.
Prevent your hard drive from filling up
Today’s solid state hard drives are incredibly fast, but they cost much more and are often smaller than traditional magnetic hard drives.
If you’re not careful or completely ignore system warnings that your hard drive is full, you can corrupt data and severely degrade performance. Your computer uses hard drive space for temporary files, so it’s important to have at least 20% of the free space.
Windows has a Disk Cleanup utility that can easily free up space, but Mac users can do the same by following these steps from Apple.
Take a few minutes each month to review the programs you have installed and see if you are actually using them. If not, uninstall it along with videos, photos, and music you no longer need as files tend to be large.
Another mistake to avoid is turning off the power button before the computer has completely shut down. One of the tasks during the shutdown process is to remove temporary files. Temporary files remain if you press the power button prematurely.
Overheat prevention
Heat is one of the biggest enemies of your computer’s health. So make sure your exhaust vents and cooling fans are working properly. Use a can of compressed air to blow the dust bunnies out of the vents. Beware of grinding noises coming from inside the computer. Most likely the cooling fan is starting to fail.
It’s a good idea to pay attention to your computer’s vents every time you change your HVAC air filter. If you have pets and are smokers, do this more often, especially with a computer sitting on the floor.
Malware payload prevention
Know your internet security software (aka antivirus) and run a full manual scan at least once a quarter because malicious software can come in from many different places. Always allow installation of all operating system updates to protect against new threats.
Ken Colburn is the founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services. Ask technical questions on Facebook, twitter.
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