Things you can do to prolong the life of your computer system and data

Computer is one of the major equipment that we have in order to perform our role as a person. Extending the role of your computer doesn’t need or involve spending money for upgrades. Nourishing our minds on how and what are the measurements to keep the life of your machine in good shape.

*Keep your machine clean inside and out. Computer cleanup is the one thing you can do every day that will keep you flush with disk space and help you free up valuable system resources. Furthermore, actual physical cleanup, as in dusting, will allow your computer to literally breathe easier, and in turn prolong the life of your system. Removing temporary files, and uninstalling old, unused applications.

*Your computer is an important energy consumer in your home. Can you save energy when using it? Yes, the same computer uses different amounts of electricity depending on how it's being used. Your computer uses less electricity at idle than when in use, and heavy use drives the power consumption higher than light use. Heavy disk I/O and maximum CPU utilization use more power, for example. Your computer can be in different "power modes." When you're not using it, your computer drops into a low power mode.

*Always protect and backup your data, your hard drives store your important image data. Putting new drives into service, when you buy new drives, you should do a little preparation to increase the likelihood of trouble-free service. As part of this preparation, it's a good practice to zero all data on the drive. ”Zero all data” means that you write all zeros on the drive (instead of ones and zeros), using the formatting tools available for your operating system. Doing this will ensure that every bit on the drive is touched. This will force the drive to do a thorough scan of the volume, find bad sectors and mark them as “off limits.”

If the drive is attached in such a way that you can access the SMART data for the drive, you can double-check the health of the drive mechanism before you transfer your data to it, or before you configure it for RAID.

SHOCKED PREVENTION Hard drives are complex and delicate mechanisms. There are two kinds of shocks to be avoided: electrostatic discharge (ESD) and impact. Do not be cavalier about either type of shock. From personal experiences, we know they need to be avoided.

LABELING HARD DRIVE Label your drives with date, usage and warranty information. It is fine to use mailing labels affixed directly to the drive, as long as you don’t cover any breathing holes. You can use an old camera bag to protect your backup drives when you take them offsite.

*CHECKING DRIVE INTEGRITY Periodically check on the drive to see how well it's functioning. There is an extensive discussion on data validation in another part of the website

MAXIMIZING RAM USAGE adding more RAM to a computer doesn't always result in a performance boost, which means that you may have to make the most of what you have. A computer that has enough RAM tends to run smoothly, whereas a computer that doesn't often holds up to load content while using programs. Proper memory management can help improve your system's performance and maximize what memory your computer has available.