Scheduling Your Mac’s Routine Maintenance

One of the common misconceptions about MacBooks is that they are totally maintenance free. This isn’t’ the case. Every computer needs routine maintenance, and from time to time, even your coveted MacBook will need some work. If you don’t, you could find yourself with a computer that just won’t run and data that you can’t access. Even though there are excellent data backup services that you can find online, you still don’t want to risk neglecting your computer and gamble with your information, content, pictures, and precious data. Here are some routine steps you can take that will help safeguard against this:

Software Updates

Apple and their products suffer from bugs just like any other system. Make sure that you’re adding the latest patches and software updates so you can keep your system running smoothly and bug free. All of these updates are free and it’s easy to get the latest software version online, either through Apple’s web site or other third party software developers. Even if some of your software runs on a cloud server, you should still be checking up on this.

Keep Your Hard-Drive Healthy

You hard drive is the brain of the whole system, and you have to make sure that it’s clean and healthy. You should regularly check your directory files and delete any unnecessary data. These files add up every day by the thousands. You computer keeps track of all of that information and its stored on your drive. This data can, over time become fragmented and will end up making your computer run slowly. Apple has a disk utility application that will perform this maintenance for you. Simply launch the utility and select your hard drive. Then click the First Aid tab and then on Verify Disk. You might need to use your OS X Install disk to perform this function, but only if you’re prompted.

Restart Your Mac

Many people never even turn their computer off and will wait weeks, or even moths without restarting their computer. This should be done regularly because if you’re not doing it, then the updates that you installed won’t be able to take effect. Even though it’s convenient to keep your system running, it has many drawbacks. For example, the more programs you launch and quit, the more OS X’s virtual memory has to swap the data and send it from the hard drive. You could even experience memory leaks over time and will, eventually, pull more and more memory from your system. If you’ve noticed that your system is running pretty slow, this could be the cause. Do an automatic restart every now and again so you can extend the life of your system.

Mac’s are expensive so don’t gamble with your system, and make sure you’re doing the necessary maintenance for the best performance capabilities possible. If you don’t, you may find yourself on the market for a new computer sooner than you think.