UNIT 2 P8

BY GEORGE SMITH-MOORE

P8- PC Maintenance

1st: Backup data

This should be done daily. All key/new/ updated work should be kept on a second storage medium.

By doing this you minimise the risk of losing pictures, videos and documents considerably.

The different storage options are numerous, yet the best ones are the USB drive (or portable HDD), or using a cloud based storage. Both of these are fantastic for keeping data safe, yet do not

use this as the only place to store data. They both have one major downside, they have a limited

amount of storage. Unless you want to pay money for the cloud backup. Also although a cloud backup will never get lost, it takes time to upload to the internet.

USB backup

The USB stick can get lost, and can get very expensive for a high ‘GB’ version. Yet it allows you to backup lots of files.A major downside to it is that they can become lost and damaged.With the addition of USB 3.0, USB sticks have become much faster, it can transfer 640MBps per second.

Cloud backup

Using a service such as OneDrive or drop box allocates you a certain amount of ‘GB’s’ for free.

This may not store all of your files as time goes on, but files can never get lost or damaged while on the system.

Cloud servers also mean that you can access the files anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

2nd: Scan for Viruses

Nowadays this should be done daily at the least.

This requires an antivirus program such as Norton. They allow for scans to be initiated at a time that suits you, or when the computer is idle.

Windows PC’s are most at risk due to the large consumer base, so windows users MUST have an anti-virus program. It MUST update regularly and scan regularly.

Virus scans

3rd: Disk clean-up

In order to maintain the performance of the PC, using either the Disk clean-up tool, or a program such as ‘CCleaner’. This searches through the PC to find all unnecessary and unwanted files.

Unnecessary files would be files like the internet cache, this takes up storage space for valuable files, as shown by the picture on the next slide, there is a possible 3,000 MB that can be removed.

Disk cleaners

4th: Disk defragging

Over time the hard-drive would become fragmented and slow the PC down as files are spread apart from one another. Defragging ‘squeezes’ these files together.

This is needed on Windows due to the way in which the files are stored, the file architecture.

This should be done monthly, yet with systems with windows 7 or later, this has become automatic and so is no longer a problem for computers.

Disk defragging

5th: Scanning for HDD errors

To access this, go to drive properties, you can schedule the task with windows Vista or later. It takes a considerable amount of time, and so is not done regularly.

This is used to find Hard-Disk errors, and amend them, this will improve the speed of the HDD, but it would also minimise the risk of corrupted files.

Checking for Hard-Disk errors (first option)

6th: Hard-Drive Backup

This is different from just protecting the files on the Hard-Disk. First make sure there are no viruses on the PC (or you would be

copying them), it is used for when either the HDD crashes or Windows becomes far too corrupted.

It should only be done every 6 months or so as it is a lengthy process.

This picture was taken from google as I could not take a picture from my pc-

OS imaging

It copies the entire OS, the benefit of this is that it prevents the need to completely re-install windows from scratch.

The only thing that would have to be done is to copy the most recent files over, this saves lots of time as all of the correct files and applications would be already there, you would not need to re-install them all.