This moment comes unexpectedly, but warnings about it appear in advance. The PC simply ceases to behave normally, it switches off itself or making you switch it off with dangerous ways. After that, all you have to do is hope that your computer will turn on a few more times, and to try to save your information.
Or, you can just remember that every computer gets older, some parts of it become unusable over time, and all you have to do is learn to be a doctor for your assistant and look after him as carefully as possible. This will avoid and prevent many of the painful problems that are experienced by ordinary users.
Digital technologies are designed to be as stable as possible, so approaching the problems with them should also be quiet, rejecting all emotions, otherwise - the chances of receiving significant material damage will increase exponentially. For IT-professionals, the loss of all project work is unacceptable and painful, so the following are a number of recommendations that will allow you to be prepared for possible force-majeure situations and to provide skillful diagnosis and resolution of possible problems before they occur.
Manage the storage of the hard disk skillfully.
There is still such a problem as installing the operating system on only one partition of the hard disk, and it does not matter HDD or SSD. Sooner or later, such a format of installation will, at least, cause a major inconvenience and, at most, almost guaranteed loss of all information. The reasons for this may be different - both damage to the operating system itself and damage to the personal computer, which will equally lead to the need to reinstall everything.
In fact, OS corruption is a much more common problem than hardware, so it recommended that you create separate partitions when installing the OS: one for the operating system and one for the user's files. This will allow you to save your files from being erased during an emergency reinstallation of Linux or Windows.
Create some of the reserve methods to boot the operating system.
Nowadays you have a lot of opportunities to alternatively boot your OS, that can help you to restore the right work of it, or to rescue your data directly from your hard drive. You can create a bootable compact disc or a USB Flash drive, or even the SD-card with your current version of the operating system or a special repair-targeted OS.
Create a few alternative sources of data storing.
The easiest way to protect your own files from loss is to periodically copy them to another storage. In today's world, there are many solutions, but there are no reliable ones.
Cloud storage? These are also someone's computers, although more reliable, but they are getting old and failing too. In addition, network failures and the unavailability of such storage sites are increasing.
Own external hard drives - they are also more reliable because they are mechanical, and even have backup methods of starting and retrieving information from them, but with considerable damage - they become a bargain for your files.
So what to do with your backup copies, and where to store them? I advise you on the following solution.
Be sure to purchase an external hard drive according to your storage requirements. This will allow you to have a place where you can store the physical copy of all your necessary files and, if necessary, quickly copy your files from PC to rescue them.
Also, if you need to access some files from anywhere, you can choose the most appropriate arbitrary cloud storage plan. Most of these repositories provide enough space, even for free.
And finally - become a doctor for your PC.
Device manufacturers have already made sure that every critical device in your assistant has information about their internal status, but not all operating system manufacturers are willing to give users access to such information.
The worst situation so far has been with Windows - since most devices receive drivers from Microsoft and not from native manufacturers - diagnostic information from critical areas such as cooling, temperature, hard drive health, and battery power is either absent or minimal.
On the other hand, the Linux and macOS operating systems (which, in fact, have always been a modified subset of the UNIX family - FreeBSD) - from the very first years of their existence, have integrated a very large number of diagnostic utilities and subsystems that interact with the hardware as a direct and via BIOS / UEFI. Therefore, in such systems, getting low battery health notice with full information about it is the norm.
Therefore, to become a true doctor for your PC, you will need documentation for it, yes - the same one that no one usually reads, as well as information about the following options:
- the minimum, nominal and maximum allowable temperature of your processor and GPU
- know your hard drive type - HDD or SSD, or in general, a hybrid SHDD
- according to hard drive type - find and understand information about S.M.A.R.T. parameters that include usage statistics and health criteria.
Knowledge of the above information, as well as periodic inspection of the equipment parameters for compliance, will allow you to monitor the status of your PC and take action in the event of deterioration. And all of the hardware-related issues go from being suddenly to actually scheduled.
Also, below I will give some of the cautions about handling the most critical component of a computer - the hard disk.
#1. If your hard drive, especially mechanical, is too often and permanently obsessed with reading (the indicator light on the PC panel is dimmed), or the recording is a bright panel light, it might be worth checking out the S.M.A.R.T.-status. If this aspect is all right and your Windows PC is just a defragmenter. If the status is threatening, then you need to start transferring the information to another media.
#2. The more threatening figures in critical parameters of S.M.A.R.T. status, the more likely it is that the information will be copied for too long, and in the end, not all of it will be rescued since there is a notion of "failure time". With each subsequent corrupted data block, the number of redirects that often fail, increases, causing neighboring blocks to corrupt as well, especially due to extensive Windows fragmentation. Damage to blocks of information begins to spread literally pandemically, so in extreme cases, one has to be extremely careful.
#3. You should also buy only new hard drives, regardless of format, HDD, SSD, or hybrid SHDD. That's the only way you have a guarantee that their factory settings and S.M.A.R.T. data are physically zero and clean. In the case of flea markets and specialist second-hand hardware stores, not honest engineers use artificial programs to clean up hard drive statistics with the help of special programs - and it looks completely new. In addition, there is no possibility to check the forgery.
And finally - do not forget about periodic hygiene for your personal computers - order cleaning at service centers, or carry it out independently, by basic cleaning of drainage ducts and parts of the cooling system, and if necessary - change from time to time "thermal paste" - it crystallizes over time, causing the processor, as an electrical device operating under high "pressure" of electrons - to boil and burn.
This is very helpful for people like me who are working from home. We really need to become a doctor for our own computer. I'm an IT but I only know a few things about hardware.