Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

Mhyperbolic · 2013-08-18 09:41:44

Hello people,

As the topic suggest, I want to know what kind of maintenance I should could (should) do with my computer.
It's a pretty basic laptop, with a spinning drive.

I've read the wikis entry on hardware maintenance, but I only talks about fsck, when I look at that, it
says that it is done during the boot process, so you don't really have to run it.

Of course you should also have an up to date system, and not throw you computer around.

It that really there is to it, or should one take more actions?

(I know that hardware will fail at some point, and that I should keep backup etc, I'm mostly
wondering about prolonging life, not making it immortal)

Thanks!

crondog · 2013-08-18 09:58:33

One thing that i like to do with my laptop and desktop is to open them up every so often and clean all the dust out of the fans and anywhere else it builds up.

stqn · 2013-08-18 12:51:28

Yes, basically remove the dust once every year or so… Also you could add some widget with the temperatures to be able to check if something’s wrong. When it’s hot you might need to use a laptop base with a big fan, or refrain yourself from doing CPU or GPU-intensive tasks. (I’m saying this because I did lose a laptop while playing Oblivion in summer.)

If you’re feeling adventurous you could try to change the thermal paste of the CPU/GPU too to put some high-quality one.

kaszak696 · 2013-08-18 13:33:07

On a side note, fsck is not a hardware maintenance tool, it's job is keeping the filesystem in a good shape. There is nothing you can do to make a hard drive last longer, it's all automatic. Once internal safeguards and routines fail, the drive is dead, or soon-to-be.

For laptops, it's sufficient to just peel off dust carpet from the radiator every few months, but it's usually a rayal pain to get to it, since manufacterers are a real aholes with their planned obsolence practices.

cfr · 2013-08-18 14:39:33

I use a cooling pad under the computer which makes it more comfortable to use and increases air circulation. Nothing fancy - it just raises the laptop up at an angle. (I have a version for home and a smaller portable version which raises it just a tad for use elsewhere.)

It won't prolong life, but running smartmontools with regular tests can alert you to problems with a hard drive before it fails. In one case this gave me about 24-48 hours notice and enabled me to lose nothing. You need to look at the test output and not just the overall health status, though, as it can say "passed" even when the rest of the output shows the drive is definitely terminal.

rebootl · 2013-08-18 15:56:54

Talking about hard drives one thing I do on my laptop is:

hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

(as udev rule)
to keep it from spinning down all the time. The spindown just annoys me and I imagine preventing it could increase the lifetime. But if you're moving your laptop around a lot, this may not be what you want. (Cause it might be safer to have it spindown/head parked then.)

Also be _very careful_ when using hdparm, cause it really can ruin your drive !
Edit: And the appropriate command may differ for your harddrive.

Last edited by rebootl (2013-08-18 15:59:47)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-08-18 09:41:44

Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

#2 2013-08-18 09:58:33

Re: Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

#3 2013-08-18 12:51:28

Re: Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

#4 2013-08-18 13:33:07

Re: Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

#5 2013-08-18 14:39:33

Re: Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

#6 2013-08-18 15:56:54

Re: Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

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