Maximize
the life of your Mac hard drive Printer
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Although
Macs are often deemed the most user-friendly computers, many Mac
users do not know much about computer maintenance. This is because
Mac OS cleverly hides all the cumbersome applications it runs to
keep the system secure and healthy. Unfortunately, while this maintains
Apple’s signature look and feel, it also takes away the user’s
ability to easily monitor and maintain the health of their computer.
Below, I recommend several procedures that can be performed by most
Mac users without much difficulty, which will help safeguard your
computer from data loss.
Be
SMART, Monitor your hard drives
SMART stands
for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology and allows
you to run diagnostics on your hard drive to determine if a failure
is imminent. In order to run the tool, launch Disk Utility (Applications:
Utilities) and click on the top level indicator for your drive in
the left-hand column. In the bottom of the window, you should see
something like “SMART Status: Verified”. If
you do not see “SMART status” at all, your Mac does
not support the technology. If you see “SMART status”
but do not see “Verified”, your drive may be at risk
of imminent failure. In this case, your best bet is to backup your
data and replace the drive. This simple, but often overlooked procedure
may save you from losing your data. One other thing worth noting
is that although there is a myriad of 3rd party applications that
can run these diagnostics automatically, be advised that using such
utilities in the event of a hardware failure can cause extensive
damage to the drive.
Clean
up files
This is pretty
self-explanatory and is applicable to all computer users –
take some time to organize your files on a regular basis. Clean
up any downloads or files from your desktop and place the files
into appropriate folders. This will not only save time, but will
also protect you from losing files due to bad sectors.
UNIX
Maintenance Scripts
Mac OS uses
automatic maintenance routines called maintenance scripts to clean
up system log files and other temporary files. The three scripts
are designed to run daily, weekly and monthly. The problem is that
these scripts are set by default to run late at night when most
Macs are either off or sleeping. If the computer is off or in sleep
mode during this time, the scripts will not run and the log files
will grow in size, clogging up the startup disk and slowing down
performance. The good news is there are a number of 3rd party programs
that exist that allow the user to set different times at which to
run the scripts, including MacJanitor (v.1.3 or later for Tiger)
and Anacron among others. I will be reviewing these software suites
in the coming articles so do check back often and sign up for our
newsletter!
Also, check
out our Mac data recovery services!
Alex Bezborodov
Technical Writer
Accurate Data Recovery
www.a-datarecovery.com
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