Wilson's Guide to Hardware Maintenance

[G. Wilson]

Wilson's Guide to Hardware Maintenance

This is a basic, general knowledge, guide to the in's and out's of hardware safety and upkeep.

Some of the things are very basic, such as running weekly tests, while some should not be

attempted unless you have extensive experience working on hardware.

Topics Covered:

• Keeping Your PC Happy
• External Hard Drives
• Intro to Raid
• Speeding up your PC
• What's That Noise?
• Changing Heat Sink

1) Keeping Your PC Happy

Computers are people too. yeah, you read correctly, computers suffer from the same issues that we do. They suffer from stress brought on from overworking, they get viruses from going out to the local brothel and nailing the most attractive, yet infected, working girl there (a.k.a the internet) without proper protection, and like people, they need regular check ups to get the expected productivity out of them.

Here are some tips to keep your PC happy, healthy, and venereal disease free:

a) Invest in quality hardware, repairs or upgrades, and up-to-date software.

The best way to keep your hardware running smooth is to keep it clean. One mistake people often make is sitting back and not doing anything until...BAM! There's a virus eating your win32 folder and the house is filled with cries of "How did this happen to me?!"

Rule #1 in the war agaisnt Malware: PREVENTION IS ALWAYS EASIER THAN CURING

Basically, you should keep your hardware and software up to date. One of a cracker's favorite ways to gain entrance into a system is through holes in out of date software security or hardware drivers.

Run Tests Every Week

See Rule #1

c) Chill Out

If you're on the computer for more than a few hours, especially laptops, you are going to want to give your PC some rest. Just like people if you work a computer too hard it will become overly strained and break down. The heat produced by long periods of high CPU activity generate a lot of heat and will wear down on your system so make sure you either take a break every once in a while or have a sufficient cooling system.

d) Clear the Fan and Intake

Another heat issue. Pretty self explanatory, about once a month you're going to want to clean out your fan or laptops vent. This can be done with a can of compressed air you can pick up from most electronics departments for a few bucks.

2) External Hard Drives

Rule# 2: BACK UP YOUR FILES

Computers can break down without giving any warning: that includes hard drives. This is why you should always have a backup drive. The easiest, and possibly cheapest, way to do this is by getting an external hard drive. They have an extremely long life because, well, you only use them to access files you put on them and they are an economical alternative to using cd's to back info up.

However, if you want greater capacities and better safety from losing data, and are a bit more hardware inclined you can use RAID.

Intro to RAID

quite simply, RAID can be explained as putting hard drives in parallel sequence. It uses multiple hard drives to either backup or split data as if the drives were one.

There are 2 common types of Raid: RAID 0 and RAID 1

RAID 0 Goes through a RAID Controller hard drive and splits the files in half, sending each half to one of 2 storage drives. This decreases the amount of space used and increases performance. However, it can compromise data integrity by separating the file.

RAID 0 diagram:

RAID 1 simply uses the Controller to copy your files to the physical drives attached. This means that if part of the data in one drive gets corrupted, the other one will automatically step in and be used for the corrupted section. RAID 1 requires twice the memory but has great data integrity.

Here is a link to instructions to set up a RAID system.

It's a little above beginner so it's recommended to only be done by those who are experienced.

3) Speeding up Your PC

Janke and Le have a great section pinned about software things you can do here but I'm going to discuss hardware things in case your issue is just a lame system.

Rule #3: RAM IS GOOD

RAM acts as a reservoir for information you want to access, the more you can have at you fingertips, ready for access, the less time your PC needs to spend trying to find it. A bigger pale means less time needing to refill. Simple as that.

Another quick tip leads us back to the first section: External hard drives. They can clear up space on your internal, giving your system more breathing room.

4) What the Hell is That Noise?

Most people if they hear a strange noise just either reboot or ignore it. Please for the love of god don't do this. I can't tell you how many times I'm called and I ask how long it's been doing it and they say "oh, about a week now." Usually when your PC is making strange noises, it's not a good thing.

The first thing to do: SEE RULE #2

The second thing is to identify what is making the noise. There are only a few moving parts on a PC so the power supply fan, case fan, or hard drive are usually the major suspects. Replacing the power supply or case fan is no big deal for anyone with a little electrical experience. Just make sure not to make the wrong connection and fry your motherboard. If it is your hard drive, sorry, but it's time for a new one. Average life for a drive is about 3-5 years depending on daily use.

Once you get a new one in, transfer all your data and you're golden.

5) Changing Your Thermal Paste

You Don't really have a need attempt this unless you mess with your CPU.

if you get the paste too thick, CPU will be too insulated and fry.

if you get too thin, it won't be insulated enough and fry.

if you don't put it on even, there will be a thick or thin spot and it will fry.

First off, unless you're changing your CPU out you shouldn't have many reasons to do this but just in case, I'll give you the quick run down. Thermal Paste is that heat conductive paste on top of your CPU in between the chip and the heat sink that keeps it from overheating when it's doing 2 billion calculations per second. Again, it doesn't need to be messed with unless you are messing with your CPU.

step 1: take out the guts of the computer to get to the CPU (under the giant fan)

Step 2: Gently remove the existing heat sink with a cotton swab

Step 3: Apply a layer of thermal paste just thick enough to cover any writing on the chip

- This is the most dangerous part, I use a razor blade to get an even coat.

Step 4: Wait for the paste to dry and replace all the equipment.

There you Have it, A quick general knowledge guide for your hardware. If anyone has any other Hardware related issues they would like to see solved, either PM me or reply to this. I'm going to try to put out a similar small guide every month for a specific topic.

PM me with questions and comments.

[Janke 1st MRB]

In RAID0, the amount of storage space on the "drive" is increased, as it treats the various disks in the array as one unit, meaning 2 500GB hard drives in RAID0, register as a single 1TB volume.

As well, there is a mixture of the two, RAID1+0, or RAID10, where a number of the drivers are combined, and the same number are used as combined data backup.

Another benefit with modern SATA RAID arrays is the ability to "hot-swap" drives, this means unplugging drives while the computer is on. This is used mostly in large data storage servers in large RAID arrays to ensure that data is stored on multiple disks both connected, and not connected to the machine, by swapping the disks connected on a schedule. When a new drive or drive array is plugged into the array, say, in a RAID10 array, the data from the 1st array is then copied to the new array as extra storage. I have never tried this, this was a concept mentioned by a teacher of mine who used to run a programming business, and I would not recommend playing around with hot-swapping yourself unless you want to risk killing your computer.

As well, the heatsink is NOT the "gunky stuff" on top of the CPU, that is the THERMAL PASTE. The HEATSINK is the metal thing with the fan on top of your CPU, and the thermal paste is a heat conducting compound that connects the two. Most factory default heatsinks that come with processors have thermal paste pre-applied, and it can last a long time. I have a CPU that is 7 years old, that has swapped heatsinks twice, and I have never needed to re-apply thermal paste. However, applying thermal paste is a delicate procedure if you get an aftermarket heatsink without it already applied. I have not had to apply it myself, but I've been told to use a dine-sized amount and spread it evenly across the bottom of the heatsink, the side that will sit overtop of the CPU.

[G. Wilson]

Touche sir, I've always used the terms heat sink and thermal paste interchangeably refering to the latter but that's a pretty big distinction to be making when you're trying to make a guide. I'll change it asap