Computer Maintenance 101

Part I Buying a Second Drive and Storage

Maintaining the use of a computer means more than running one of those ubiquitous PC Tune up programs found on nearly every file-related site across the Internet. Everyone using a computer on a daily basis should think in very practical terms. For me this means not having to ship my computer off to an expensive shop every few months to clean viruses or restore lost folders of valuable documents and photos. With the advice below, that “computer in the shop” situation will be a thing of the past. Here are the steps I took toward a disaster-free computer experience.

Buy a good hard drive

This means two things: quality and size. Whenever I buy any piece of electronic equipment I look at user reviews. This means reading what people have to say who own what you’re about to purchase. Forget Consumer Reports and the proselytizing raves from the manufacturers. Look to the customers. The folks who own the drives and DVD players don’t pull any punches. For this purpose, go to Amazon.com. The user base is huge and you’re bound to find dozens of owners with something to say. Read the Pros and Cons. If the reviews don’t contain mostly four or five-star ratings, move on.

As to size, the thought that “I’ll never use that much space” leaves out the most important element in maintenance: back-ups, and notice the plural. Assuming you’re an average user with your main drive, the C:, full of programs like a word processor and spreadsheet, Photoshop, various utilities, documents, music downloads, and pictures, that drive might contain anywhere from ten to thirty or so gigabytes. Add movie downloads and you’re way beyond that.

To back up this much space, common sense says you need another area large enough to hold the whole C: drive; in other words, you need double its space. Internet wisdom (from we poor people who’ve lost our entire stash of programs and documents) dictates a second back up as well. Now we’re talking triple the main drive space. Meaning? These days, with larger programs and movie and music files, a minimum of a 250 gigabyte, and preferably a 500 gigabyte, hard drive. And make it external. External drives are plug and play and come with a standard USB connector.

Store Nothing on the Main C: Drive

The only use you have for the main drive, the one that runs your programs, is just that. The C: drive is the engine, not the passenger compartment. It’s where viruses will find a home, from downloads and emails, and where problems will arise from adding and deleting programs and personal documents. This leads to the second step in our Computer Maintenance regimen, E: drive storage.

You’re asking, if I don’t store anything on my computer, where do I store it, on discs? No. First, DVD discs only hold about 4.7 gigabytes. It would take dozens for the kind of back up and storage we’re talk about. Second, disc disintegrate, become scratched, and worse, lost. The best method I’ve found for storage is a second hard drive. Assuming you have a CD or DVD drive installed, your computer would have three drives: C:, the main and original; D:, your disc drive; and now E:, the new external drive.

Organization
The common practice is to stuff everything into the My Documents folder. I’ve found this to be messy and quite confusing. My advice is to create a few basic folders on that new hard drive. Being an avid downloader of utilities and programs, I made a folder for that. Have a lot of music? Another one, there. And don’t forget documents. Here are folders you should consider creating on the E: drive: (the “My” prefix is cosmetic)

• My Downloads – Put any programs you download from the Internet here
• My Music – Including CD’s transfers or songs from various sources
• My Documents – A broad category which will hold all word/text files, spreadsheet saves, databases, etc.
• My Pictures – Your family photos, graphics from Photoshop you’re working on, and images you’ve downloaded from the Internet

This short list is necessarily very general to give you the idea that some sort of organization is needed.

Part II Protection and Making an Image

The Healthy Drive

By healthy I mean clean and mean. Every one knows the damage computer viruses can do. It’s said that without a good anti-virus program, you won’t last twenty minutes on the Internet. Not much of an exaggeration. A virus filter is essential. Many still use Norton. I don’t for three reasons. It’s expensive. It’s bloated with unneeded features and just plain BIG. And it’s not as effective as the newer programs. One such program that is free, quite popular, and gets job done is Avast Home Edition. It can be downloaded from www.download.com . I’ve used it for several years with great results.

For general cleaning here are some great applications, all free:

• CCleaner for getting rid of useless temp files.
• Eusing Registry cleaner to keep your registry in shape
• Zappit, another, smaller clean-up utility
• Ad-Aware, the free version, for security from spy ware, Trojans, and hijacking

As to the “mean” part, do defragment your computer on a regular basis. The systems folder on every PC has such a program. If you want to go a more sophisticated route, I suggest Perfect Disk from Raxco. It’s fast and easy to schedule.

Imaging your C: Drive for Backups

Once your computer is in good shape, it’s time to save it. This is where imaging comes in. I’ve made many mistakes since I first began using computers on a regular basis in the late 1980’s, mostly in the form of lost data. I began backing up files and folders, but somehow these became so disorganized as to be nearly useless. Then, a few years back, the thought of copying the entire hard drive occurred to me, making an image of it.

What is an “image”? It is an exact copy of the whole C: drive, email for email, and document for document. Even the desktop is reproduced down to icon placement. In our maintenance scheme, an image becomes the perfect solution for minimum down time. Instead of a week in the shop, it’s 15 minutes in the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. How is this possible? By simply putting a good image back on the drive. Of course, you need a program for such an operation. Without qualification I will recommend Acronis True Image. It works with all PC versions through Windows 7 and includes a host of useful features.

Making an image of your drive is the backup strategy. The procedure is simple. In spite of the amenities within Acronis, only two areas need be used: Backup and Restore, which do just what they say. After you’ve cleaned the C: drive, run Acronis, and make an image of the C:. Where will you store this image? On that neat new hard drive, of course. Keep a couple back-up images you’ve made periodically. These take up a lot of space so at some point you’ll be deleting the older ones.

When that terrible time comes when, despite your best efforts, your main drive becomes overrun with viruses or becomes unusable in one of a dozen other ways. At that juncture, run Acronis and restore that clean image you’ve saved. Before you do, be sure to copy the few files that you didn’t store in that original image, the ones from that back up on. Email and your address book need saving. Find where files are and copy them to a temporary area on the second drive. If you don’t know their location, Google the topic to find out. Also you don’t want to lose all those new Internet Favorites or Bookmarks. These folders, along with your email, are located in Documents and Settings. Again, if unsure, Google. Now, Restore the clean image and simply copy these new emails and bookmarks back to the newly restored C: drive.

A final word. Yes, there are two purchase costs in this maintenance scheme. The drive will set you back a hundred dollars (or less) and Acronis is not free, but compared to the cost of a commercial repair shop and the lost work and out-of-the-loop time, you will thank yourself over the years. Take it from this software junkie and turn your computer desk from an emergency room to a carefree, working enterprise.