Maintaining a personal device may not be the all-or-nothing consideration that leads to professional breakdown and downtime should it not be performed, but it is a great habit to get into and can help you become more familiar with your devices.
No matter if you’re tired of cleaning your computer for your grandparents and think they should learn a few basic functions, or if you’ve just purchased a new PC and want to keep it in the best condition for as long as possible, what matters is being consistent, and treating such a device with care.
After all, devices now are so sophisticated that with good care and attention to detail, fewer and fewer problems exist, and can last for years upon years. For instance, many in the tech space find purchasing older devices with robust functionalities, such as Lenovo Thinkpad’s ultrabook line, a more appropriate investment as with good care, they can truly last for a long time.
Let’s consider how to achieve that then, with a few simple computer efforts anyone can perform:
Purging Necessary Hard Drive Space
It’s good to make sure that you keep up with the health of your hard drives to the extent this can be applied. For instance, purging this space of temporary files can make a tremendous difference in the long run, helping your machine work more quickly, improving the longevity of your hard drives, and allowing you to access your saved and indexed files more easily. Add a cloud storage backup option to this, and you can be sure that all of your data needs are taken care of.
Defragmenting Your Hard Drives
Defragging your hard drives, which can often be achieved through downloadable tools and sometimes via the BIOS menu, can allow you to free up space on a hard drive for faster access, by rearranging how the files are stored. Note that with modern SSD’s, this process is less necessary, but if you have storage devices in HDD, including portable drives, this can be tremendously useful in the long run. Commit to this one a year or so, and you can ensure that your devices work just as intended despite heavy usage over time.
Replacing Thermal Paste
Replacing thermal paste takes a little know-how and a delicate touch, but it’s a worthwhile means of reducing the heat of your CPU. Thermal paste is a paste designed to conduct heat, to make it easier for the heatsink of your cooler to work well. Often, prebuilts and laptops come with their own thermal paste, but over time this can wear off. Applying your own in these circumstances, or replacing it, can be a great idea. Using a small amount of isopropyl alcohol and a damp cloth, gently remove the thermal paste on the CPU, and place a pea-sized dab of your own on top. Then secure your cooler, and allow the paste to spread as you turn on your machine. Before you know it, your temperatures will have reduced, and free temperature checking tools can aid you in finding that.
Following this article, you’re certain to keep up with the most essential and simple computer maintenance efforts anyone can perform.
