Remember to do 'computer self-care,' lainons!

Today I cleaned my keyboard after several years of not doing so, and it's really nice having a clean keyboard. I'm also planning on properly organizing my password manager (as of now it's a huge mess that I have to use the search bar in KeePassXC to get any usage out of). I'd like to encourage others to follow my practice of taking good care of your computer. Organize your desktop! Make sure your files and media are well-organized and backed up! Clean your equipment! Vacuum the dust from your case! Post any other ideas for how to care well for your computer

Thanks for the reminder. I need to fix a backup solution and organize my downloads folder as soon as possible.

>>60501 the downloads folder is a big one! I always do my best to make sure it's as clean as possible. on my old computer I let it get too full. using it for storage is nearly always a mistake

Can someone give advice on how to know when parts need replacing? My build is rapidly approaching 8 years old. The only issue I've noticed is the Win7 dual bootstarting to ask for dskchk's a lot, can a Win7 OS be cloned onto a new drive? I heard Windows breaks if you try and just copy it across. If so, I guess I'll just have to copy over important files and browser saved passwords so old accounts don't lock me out or make me add a phone.

>>60556 put on a new coat of thermal paste if you haven't. I neglected to do that on my old 8 year old PC and only realized I was making a mistake after i compared its CPU temps to my new PC. (it ran 50 C idle, 98 under load; my new one runs 30 idle 60 under load). get some good, quality thermal paste; it's cheap. then I believe the standard protocol is to put rubbing alcohol onto a microfiber cloth, then use that to wipe off the CPU and heatsink. use the grain of rice method, any other method of applying thermal paste is bullshit (except the pea method, for larger CPUs). I don't have any experience with moving windows across drives, unfortunately. if you're on a hard drive, you'll definitely want to replace that; mine has lasted 8 years but they're not really guaranteed to last past 5. use crystaldiskinfo if you want an idea. definitely a good idea to be replacing that. honestly, it might be best to back up your current install and do a completely fresh one to get rid of any junk you've forgotten about (unless you're diligent about preventing this accumulation) as for other parts, it just depends what you want to do with the computer! if you want more power somewhere, an upgrade would be in order. as long as you take good care of them, computer parts don't degrade particularly rapidly, so i would personally just compare the temperatures for each part of my pc to the ideal range at rest and under load (looking up the ideal online). honestly, i would migrate your browser's saved passwords to a local password manager. they're not really secure in your browser and if there's any sort of remote ACE exploit in any of the applications you use, you could get all of them stolen. it's more common than you think! it's a bit more effort than the browser's automatic logins, but the additional security is well worth it. also, vacuum that case and check that the fans haven't gotten worn down over the years. if they're lower quality fans it's not unlikely they could be due for a replacement.

I use Bleachbit regularly and I do backups sometimes. >>60556 >>60560 On GNU/Linux, you can use Smartmontools (smartctl) to check the disk and lm_sensors to check the temps. I recommend you use SystemRescueCD (https://www.system-rescue.org/) to run the S.M.A.R.T. test. You can use Prime95 or mprime to do a stress test to check that your system, cooling and PSU are working properly.

> cleaned my keyboard after several years I hope you rolled the dust into one big joint and smoked it. Imagine all the drugs that have fallen in there in that time.

>>60621 I'm sober of literally everything but my medication (which makes me kind of drunk if i take it with food). That dust would be nasty! also I blew it all off outside

>>60499 having a full drive can shorten its lifespan if it is only always getting written over that certain free space (however most hard drives are very reliable) let's say a drive that is 90% full and 90% of the contents are static while the other 10% always gets overwritten or replaced, this is especially true on SSDs. also, don't use SSD with torrent since they usually write and reduce lifespan for every clusters downloaded, every time another chunk is added to the torrent you're still leeching, your SSD would have to update all its layers and ECC stuff, which consumes a lot of write-overwrite operations than usual (a sequential file transfer). if possible, make the torrent save first in a scratch drive or into the ram before writing to SSD. I also recommend electronics being either plugged at all times or with battery charge (especially when it has SSD) or have them nearby electric fields (live electrical outlets). electric fields prevent metal from getting corrosion, it's the reason underground fuel tanks are fed with electric current. >>60560 proceed with caution as too much air vacuum (unidirectional air movement/friction) might "align" the surface charges and cause static electricity to build up on its own (or make both negative and positive charges clustered which is susceptible to static electricity discharge with another object or simply its own surface) >honestly, i would migrate your browser's saved passwords to a local password manager. people and other programs can literally just copy the entire browser profile and export it to another browser and they'd have access to all the saved passwords. this is no big deal with useless online accounts but password managers are not a perfect solution. your biggest problem would be clipboard-jacking which exist on any platform OS or phone. even javascript can force a "ctrl+v" in background and snoop on your keystroke even with another tab but most of these happen all the time in android with mainstream and mostly (repeat offending) chinesium apps. please use appopsx to disable readclipboard on the suspected app, it only appears after the app has triggered the clipboard-jacker (it was promised/rumored that android 11 would have solve this but it still hasn't). a lot of apps still abuse the clipboard and steal people's notes/passwords/phrase-searches. if you're wondering how that app knew about what you were "thinking" it probably read your clipboard instead. they also steal your ideas (if you copy your notes or worse your passwords), mind you. if your password manages uses clipboard stay away from it. it's still vulnerable PC or mobile, you're better off using pen and paper and improving your typing speed as the perfect password management. >>60556 >I heard Windows breaks if you try and just copy it across. you are supposed to mirror the partition images to a newer drive instead so you get to keep the working drive until the new one works properly. copying is a rookie mistake, windows folders have several combinations of complicated permissions but I just recommend on doing a fresh install, there's no way knowing if it had some malware during the wannacry incident, even I got one despite knowing a lot about the nature of malware (which I think got installed officially or via hijacked ms server or it's just me being targeted lol).

>>60629 >I also recommend electronics being either plugged at all times Old motherboards, which don't have solid capacitors, may not like that, so take that in consideration.

>>60499 >it's really nice having a clean keyboard I do it once in a while. It's very relaxing for me. As for me, I plan on making a fresh and new install of my system. I've lost track of everything i did to my poor computer.

>>60629 >your biggest problem would be clipboard-jacking which exist on any platform OS or phone. if I'm not mistaken, wayland fixes this by disabling primary selection? iirc that's why my plasma wayland clipboard is so janky and sometimes i have to copy something twice before it'll let me paste it.

>>60714 Might I recommend using NixOS in the future? Its declarative package management ensures you won't lose track again.

>>60764 >NixOS Or GNU Guix System with NonGuix repo. >https://guix.gnu.org/ >https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

>>60764 >>60767 Ay! sounds interesting. Always up to check out stuff. thanks lainons!

>>60499 I always do. Especially the keyboard, once a year I take out all the keycaps and wash them in dishsoap. Thanks for reminding us OP.