Hard Disk Maintenance

Overview

There are a range of system tuning and hard disk cleaning functions (i.e. Housekeeping) that should be performed regularly to keep the hard disk healthy and free from infections and rubbish.

Maintenance Tasks

Some of these functions can be performed by the PC’s operating system, e.g. hard disk error checking and cleaning. However, all of the required functions can be performed by a range of free (i.e. legally free) utility software available for download on the Internet.

The broad categories of these functions include, but are not restricted to:

• Anti-virus, e.g. trojans, worms and rootkits
• Spyware, e.g. Bots and adware
• Firewall, e,g. Hacking, spam and unsolicited emails
• Registry cleaning - repairing and cleaning of the Windows Registry
• Diagnostics and repair - finding and repairing a range of logical and software induced errors, e.g. File system errors
• Cleaning - removal of unwanted files, temporary files created by Windows, some applications and the Internet

These functions will be described in detail as more topics are added to this guide.

Maintenance in the Workplace

In the workplace due to the critical nature of many of these functions it could go against the policy of your IT Services for you to perform some of these functions as you could inadvertently delete data and damage applications.

The reason for mentioning this is to make you aware of the need so you can ask your IT Services what, if any, of the user clean up functions you are allowed to perform and, if necessary, be shown how to use them.