PC Maintainence

Computer Maintenance
Computer maintenance is critical to the smooth running of your computer.
Computers have become such an important part of our day-to-day lives, that we have to take care of them.

You should immediately put a preventative maintenance program in place for your computer.

Preventative maintenance will help to protect your computer from possible breakdowns and extend its life.

Preventative maintenance means that you will perform scheduled maintenance cleaning, checks and updates on your computer to prevent system problems instead of waiting until your computer breaks down. Unfortunately, computer maintenance is ignored by most computer users. The general practice is to use the computer until it is broken and then it is either repaired or replaced!

Advantages of Computer Maintenance

• Data Protection:
  There is a very high risk of possibly losing your data if you do not perform preventative computer maintenance. Without maintenance, your computer is susceptible to breakdowns.
• Saves Time:
  When your computer stops working, you have to either repair it or replace it. You will definitely be losing valuable manhours with whichever of these options you chose.
• Saves Money:
  The cost of repairing or replacing your computer can be costly. Spending a few hours each month performing computer maintenance tasks will be worth it.
• Better Performance:
  Maintenance will help to keep your computer in good working condition. 

What Do You need...

 These are tools that are included with your computer operating system that will help to enhance its performance and extend its life expectancy. Some of these are listed below:

Disk Cleanup, ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter:
Keeping your computer running at top performance involves having your hard drive in excellent condition. Click here to learn how to keep your Hard Drive running smoothly.
Backup:
It is extremely important to create backup copies of any data on your computer that you cannot afford to lose and this cannot be emphasized enough. You should backup your files on a regular basis. Here are some of the ways that you can lose your important data:

• Hard drive failure
• Deleting in error
• Virus infection
• File system corruption
• Software failure

To reduce the possibility of data loss, you should perform regular computer maintenance. Here are some methods that will allow you to perform backups:

• Removable Storage Drives (CD-RW, DVD-RW)
• Tape Drives
• Additional Internal Hard Drive
• Removable Hard Drives

I would not recommend using floppy disks (as a method of backing up your data) since they are slow and do not have the capacity for storing large files.
If you use Windows XP Professional and upwards, you can learn how to backup and recover your information by using the Backup Utility provided. Here are some backup tips:

• Keep a set of backup rescue disks for your operating system.
• Keep a backup copy of your original software.
• Backup as quickly as possible after creating a document that you cannot afford to lose!