In this chapter, you’ll learn how to:
Maintain your hard disk by checking for errors, deleting unnecessary files, and defragmenting files.
Set up your system for easier recovery by creating restore points and by backing up your files.
Keep your system up-to-date by checking for updates, patches, and security vulnerabilities.
Set up a maintenance schedule to keep your system running in peak form without burdening your schedule.
Computer problems, like the proverbial death and taxes, seem to be one of those constants in life. Whether it’s a hard disk biting the dust, a power failure that trashes your files, or a virus that invades your system, the issue isn’t whether something will go wrong, but rather when will it happen. Instead of waiting to deal with these difficulties after they occur (what we call pound-of-cure mode), you need to become proactive and perform maintenance on your system in advance (ounce-of-prevention mode). This will not only reduce the chances that something will go wrong, but it will also set up your system to more easily recover from any problems that do occur. This chapter shows you how various Microsoft Windows XP utilities and techniques can help you do just that. In particular, we give you a step-by-step plan for maintaining your system and checking for the first signs of problems.
Our hard disks store our programs and, most important, our precious data, so they have a special place in the computing firmament. They ought to be pampered and coddled to ensure a long and trouble-free existence, but, unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Just consider everything that a modern hard disk has to put up with:
Wear and tear. If your computer is running right now, its hard disk is spinning away at between 5,400 and 10,000 revolutions per minute. That’s right—even though you’re not doing anything, the hard disk is hard at work. Because of this constant activity, most hard disks simply wear out after a few years.
Bumps and thumps. Your hard disk includes "read/write heads" that are used to read data from, and write data to, the disk. These heads float on a cushion of air just above the spinning hard disk platters. A bump or jolt of sufficient intensity can send them crashing onto the surface of the disk, which could easily result in trashed data. If the heads happen to hit a particularly sensitive area, the entire hard disk could crash.
Power surges. The current that is supplied to your PC is, under normal conditions, reasonably constant. The possibility exists, however, for your computer to be assailed by massive power surges (for example, during a lightning storm). These surges can wreak havoc on a carefully arranged hard disk.
So what can you do about these flies in the ointment? Windows XP comes with a program called Check Disk that can check your hard disk for problems and repair them automatically. It might not be able to recover a totally trashed hard disk, but it can at least let you know when a hard disk might be heading for trouble.
Check Disk has two versions: a GUI version and a command-line version, both of which we discuss in the next two sections.