Those important computer tasks—like securing, cleaning, and backing up—are like any other resolution: we all say we’re going to do them but rarely keep up with them all year. Here’s our simple guide to staying on track in 2011. More »
Blog Archives
Resolved: How to Keep Your Computer Safe, Clean, and Backed Up in 2011 [Resolutions 2011]
Posted on January 3, 2011
How to Clean Up Your Mac’s “Open With” Contextual Menu [Video]
Posted on December 8, 2010
![Click here to read How to Clean Up Your Mac's "Open With" Contextual Menu](http://cache-01.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/12/160x120_mac-cleanup-thumb.jpg "Click here to read How to Clean Up Your Mac's "Open With" Contextual Menu")
If you’ve made good use of your Mac’s “Open With” contextual menu, you’ve probably noticed it can get a bit cluttered with duplicates. Fortunately, there’s an easy trick to tidy things up. More »
How to Clean Up Your Mac’s “Open With” Contextual Menu [Video]
Posted on December 8, 2010
![Click here to read How to Clean Up Your Mac's "Open With" Contextual Menu](http://cache-02.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/12/160x120_mac-cleanup-thumb.jpg "Click here to read How to Clean Up Your Mac's "Open With" Contextual Menu")
If you’ve made good use of your Mac’s “Open With” contextual menu, you’ve probably noticed it can get a bit cluttered with duplicates. Fortunately, there’s an easy trick to tidy things up. More »
Mac 101: Keep Your Mac Running with Regular Maintenance
Posted on December 2, 2010
If your Mac is running slow or things don’t seem to be working as they should, it may just be that you need to give your computer a little bit of TLC in the form of regular maintenance. Here are a few ways to look after your Mac to make sure it doesn’t get too ill.
Before you start, it’s always a good idea to do a backup of your system, or at least your sensitive files. These are very basic steps that don’t incur much risk, but you’re always better off having a backup than not.
Do It Every Day: Empty the Trash
It might seem obvious, but emptying the Trash is a great way to claim back hard drive space, which can, in some cases, speed up your Mac. To do this, simply click and hold (or right-click) the Trash icon in the Dock. Then click Empty Trash in the pop-up menu which appears. You’d be surprised how often you might forget to do this for days or even weeks at a time.
Do It Once a Month: Give Your Battery a Break
If you’re like me, and you never completely shut down your MacBook, instead only closing the lid occasionally to put it to sleep, then your battery might be getting a bit worn out. It could even be losing the ability to charge completely. Once in a while, turn your laptop off completely to give the battery a rest. Apple even suggests regularly running the charge down until the notebook turns off, then waiting a while to let it run out completely before recharging.
You can check the condition of your battery if you’re running Snow Leopard (10.6.x) by holding Option and clicking the battery status icon in the Menu Bar. If it shows ‘Replace Soon’, your battery may be losing the ability to hold its charge. If “Replace Now” or “Service Battery” is displayed, you should contact Apple about getting the battery replaced, especially if you’re still covered under warranty or AppleCare.
Do It Once Every Couple Months: Verify and Repair Disks and Permissions
Repair Disk Permissions
Repairing disk permissions can sort out strange goings-on, particularly those related to starting up your Mac. Open up Disk Utility (Found in the Applications>Utilities folder) and click on the disk you’re interested in using the source menu on the left. Click the button on the left, Verify Disk Permissions. Disk Utility will automatically take care of the rest.
If you need to, you can click Repair Disk Permissions to iron out any errors that get picked up. I’d suggest doing this before restoring and erasing disks and so on. Oftentimes repairing permissions will sort out the problem, without having to resort to a disk repair.
Verify and Repair Disks
If something strange starts happening on your Mac, it’s a good idea to verify that your startup disk is okay. If the structure of the disk’s file system is changed in some way, then your Mac might start behaving strangely. In order to check that everything is as it should be, you can once again use Disk Utility. Select your startup disk from the list of drives on the left and hit Verify Disk. Disk Utility will go ahead and check the status of the disk you selected. Don’t worry if your computer is unresponsive during the test; that’s normal.
If Disk Utility finds an issue with a disk, you can use the Repair Disk button to have your Mac try to repair it automatically. Most of the time, a simple repair will sort out any issues you’re having with a disk.
Sometimes, though, you will have to boot your Mac from your OS X install disc in order for Repair Disk to work. To do that, make sure your OS X install disc is in your Mac’s drive, reboot your computer, and hold C. Don’t reinstall OS X, but instead choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu and try to verify and repair once again.
Getting It Done Automatically
It can be a pain to remember to carry out maintenance on your machine regularly. Luckily, there’s an application, OnyX, which can perform maintenance such as checking permissions and cleaning out temporary files automatically. OnyX can perform daily, weekly and monthly scripts which do all the boring things for you. Plus it’s free. OnyX can’t empty the Trash, but it can clear caches and temporary files. It also checks the status of your startup disk whenever you launch the application.
Got any maintenance tips of your own? Share them in the comments.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
- Motives and Possibilities for a Big Apple Acquisition
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- Why Humans are the Biggest Threat to Cloud Adoption
JavaRa Updates and Removes Old and Redundant Java Versions [Downloads]
Posted on April 9, 2010
Windows only: Tiny utility JavaRa cleans up older or redundant versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that might be littering up your PC, and optionally updates to the latest version. It’s a simple tool that just works. More »
Give Your Computer and Peripherals a Spring Cleaning [Computers]
Posted on April 9, 2010
Most of us are more concerned about the tidiness of our directories and files than we are about our physical computer. A dirty computer is a failure-prone computer, so let’s dig in with some spring cleaning tips. More »
Today Is National PC Cleanup Day, So Let’s Tidy Up Your System [Computers]
Posted on February 8, 2010
The Web Worker Daily blog reminds us that today is National Clean Out Your Computer Day. Want to do some serious PC cleaning but not sure where to start? We’ve got your back, so let’s get with the purging.
Photo by karindalziel.
Clean Out Your Inbox
One of the first places you’ll probably find bogged down with a bunch of junk you don’t need is your email inbox. If you use Gmail to manage your email, follow these simple steps to free up loads of space without losing important emails. Once you’ve wrestled your inbox into submission, assign a Trusted Trio of three folders to keep your inbox clean: Follow Up, Archive, and Hold.
Daring productivity mavens may want to take this tip a step further and try out our own Gina Trapani’s idea and eliminate the Archive folder:
Gmail comes with an archive area built in: click on the “All Mail” link to see it. When you archive a message in Gmail (either by clicking the Archive button, selecting the menu option or hitting the E key), the message gets yanked out of your inbox and archived in the “All Mail” view. That means there’s no need for the Trusted Trio’s Archive folder. That is, you only need Follow Up and Hold buckets.
Give Your Filesystem a Thorough Once-Over
Now that your inbox is looking svelte, let’s move on to the stuff going on around your PC’s system. If you think your computer may have been infected with some form of malware but have been putting off hunting it down, you’ll want to find a solid, deep-cleaning malware-removal tool and get rid of what ails you. Once you’ve done that, get a better deadbolt on your system with some reliable antivirus software. (In fact, around Lifehacker HQ we tend to think that Windows security tools are pretty great.)
Even after you’ve removed the malware, you may still have quite a few uninstalled-then-forgotten apps sitting around cluttering up your system. To completely get rid of your unwanted apps, try previously mentioned Revo Uninstaller (we’re happy with the free version).
Once you’ve relieved your PC of all the garbage that was weighing it down, make sure it stays in pristine condition with an automated Windows file cleaner like CCleaner (which you can automate to run nightly), and keep your oft-used folders organized with Adam Pash’s Belvedere. Use Windows’ built-in Scheduled Tasks, to make sure your hard drive performs regular health maintenance tasks.
Clean Out Your Hardware Dust Bunnies
Now that your PC’s brain is purring along, let’s give its innards a good cleaning, too. Don’t be intimidated at the thought of opening its case to evacuate PC dust bunnies. Grab a Phillips head screw driver, some mechanical oil with a dropper, and a can of compressed air, then get to work.
These are a few of our favorite ways for cleaning up our PCs in honor of National Clean Out Your Computer Day, but we know you’ve got your own great suggestions, too, so let’s hear them in the comments.
Feb. 8 is Clean Out Your Computer Day [Web Worker Daily]
UltraDefrag Is a Portable and Open-Source Disk Defragmenter [Downloads]
Posted on February 8, 2010
Windows: If you like your software open-source, you’ll definitely want to check out UltraDefrag, a snappy open-source Windows disk defragmenter.
UltraDefrag is available as a portable application and in a GUI and ultra lightweight command-line only version—the lightweight version is designated as "micro" in the download list and is at the top of the screen, make sure to scroll down for the GUI version if you want to interact with the program like in the screenshot above.
With UltraDefrag you can defragment your entire disk, defragment based on the file and folder—handy if your disk defragmentation is limited to a handful of frequently edited and altered files—and set it up to defragment during the boot process to access files Windows usually has locked.
UltraDefrag is open-source and available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. Have a favorite tool for managing your disks? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
UltraDefrag [via DownloadSquad]
Best Disk Defragmenter: Defraggler [Hive Five Followup]
Posted on September 1, 2009
Last week we asked you to share your favorite disk defragmenter, and after we rounded up the top contenders, you cast your votes to crown the most popular of the bunch.
Now we’re back to share the results of the rather tight race. At the top of the heap is Defraggler, followed by a neck-and-neck—less than a percentage point difference—race for second and third place for Auslogics Disk Defrag and MyDefrag, respectively.
For more information about the top five contenders, check out the full Hive Five.
Five Best Disk Defragmenters [Hive Five]
Posted on August 30, 2009
Your computer’s a busy beaver, rapidly accessing and utilizing files all in the name of bringing you what you want, when you want it. Sometimes it needs a little help tidying up, and that’s where these five disk defragmenters come in.
Photo by Alex Witherspoon.
Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite defragmentation tools and now we’re back to share the results.
For those of you unfamiliar with the problem of file fragmentation, a quick—and quite simplified—primer is in order. Files are stored on a hard drive in blocks of data. The larger the file, the larger the number of blocks it is composed of. As your operating system accesses files, moves files around, and so on, data blocks are not always arranged in the most effective manner. Imagine it like a messy office where as you opened file folders from your file cabinet you frequently placed documents from inside all over the room. You have a great memory, and you can find all the pages from each folder again if you need to, but you waste a lot of time just moving around looking for them.
In a perfect system the blocks of data that compose a file would be in the immediate vicinity of the file header, and your operating system would waste no time at all looking for the other pieces of the file. As it stands, however, on a badly fragmented disk the data can be scattered in pieces across the entire platter of the hard disk. The following defragmentation applications are specialized tools which will help you optimize your hard drive. Continuing with the analogy of the file cabinet, a defragmenter is the helpful assistant that comes in and alphabetizes all your documents in the appropriate folders and file drawers for you.
If you’re in the mood to dig into the more arcane aspects of the topic, definitely check out the Wikipedia entries on file system fragmentation and defragmentation. Now onto the top five nominees:
Auslogics Disk Defrag (Windows, Free)
Auslogics Disk Defrag is a simple disk defragmentation program. You can defragment multiple disks or select individual files or folders for defragmentation. Auslogics allows you to set the priority of the application and can tell your computer to shut itself down when the defragmentation process is complete—a handy feature when you want it to scan and defragment while you're sleeping but don't want to leave your computer idling all night. Auslogics Disk Defrag is a free and portable application.
MyDefrag (Formerly JKDefrag) (Windows, Free)
MyDefrag is an effective tool for defragmenting your disks. You can run it in default mode and get not only a defragmented disk but also optimized file placement; or you can tinker with it via scripting and further increase your disk optimization for your specific needs. Even without its script support, MyDefrag does an excellent job defragmenting files and moving them to the optimum place on your hard disk. Files that are frequently accessed together are grouped together in zones for increased performance. MyDefrag will even scan the space allocated to the master file table and will move files from that space back to more appropriate places (sometimes when pressed for space Windows will dump files there, effectively orphaning them from the rest of the system).
PerfectDisk (Windows, $29.99)
PerfectDisk is one of only two commercial entries in this week’s Hive Five. One of PerfectDisk’s biggest claims to fame is what they call “Space Restoration Technology”. On top of optimizing your disks during actual defragmentation, PerfectDisk monitors disk writing to ensure that future files are written in the most efficient way possible in order to cut down on potential defragmentation. PerfectDisk will also analyze your data usage and create optimization patterns suited for your style of file use and work. It can be scheduled or set to run when the computer is idle for continuous defragmentation.
Defraggler (Windows, Free)
Defraggler, from the same company that produces popular applications CCleaner and Recuva, is a portable defragmentation tool. It can scan multiple disks, individual disks, folders, or individual files for some quick, specific defragging. When Defraggler scans a disk, it shows you all the fragmented files and lets you either select sets to be defragmented or batch defragment all of them.
Diskeeper (Windows, $29.99)
Like PerfectDisk, Diskeeper is packed with features not usually found in free defragmentation solutions. In addition to the basic defragmentation tools, Diskeeper can, for example, perform a quick defragmentation of system files on boot to keep your operating system running as efficiently as possible. Diskeeper, like PerfectDisk, has a system for continuously defragmenting files and optimizing new files for disk storage while you work. When you defragment multiple hard drives, Diskeeper selects different algorithms based on the disk—for example, it optimizes your operating system disk differently from a media storage disk.
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the most popular defragmentation applications, it’s time to cast a vote for your favorite:
Which Disk Defragmenter is Best?(trends)
Have a strong opinion about defragmenting? Can’t believe your favorite program wasn’t included? Sound off in the comments.