We all know, there’s nothing more frustrating than a hard drive failure and when it happens – it feels beyond your control, right? Well, it may be that you’ve neglected the hardware accidentally and set it up for failure. The good news is that we’ve got a few tricks of the trade to help you slow down the aging process and preserve the integrity of your equipment for as long as possible. After all, it houses all of your data doesn’t it? So, here we go:

Run Your Disk-Checking Utilities. This one is very simple to implement, although it sounds like a long-winded procedure. Overtime a hard drive will naturally begin to develop errors as it ages – whether they be software kinks or physical wear and tear. This natural deterioration eventually leads to boot failures and of course, racks up incalculable downtime as your system processes gradually slow down.

To forestall the inevitable, next time you reboot your computer on Windows use the command “chkdskZ:/f” without the quotation marks. It looks like gibberish but it gets the job done. This quick little scan will find and correct any physical and system errors, as long as you select “Automatically fix file system errors.”

Avoid Overheating. If you’ve got your hardware cozied away in a desk or cabinet, you may want to relocate it to increase air circulation. Give your machine breathing room. If you cram it into a tight space – you’ll unwittingly expedite the aging process and your PC will slow down considerably. If you are hard-pressed for space in your office, try to elevate it, at the very least.

Upgrade to an SSD Drive. If you’ve got the funds, the best way to bypass hard drive failure completely, is to invest in a solid state drive. This will improve the speed at which your applications load and programs run, but it won’t affect the load time of your Internet-browsing. If you only use a few programs on your computer at any given time, it’s probably not worth the investment, as SSDs run around $200. That being said, they have no moving parts, are quiet, durable, extremely fast, and their life span is incredible. Plus, it’ll save you a ton of time in transferring and recovering backed-up data. As you well know, in any business, time is money. The investment will pay off in no time, if your current hard drives are close to disrepair. That being said, if you’re still experiencing issues or are unsure as to the condition of your computer’s parts, you may want to have it checked out by a professional to determine if anything is outdated and whether or not a total replacement might be your most cost-effective option in the long run.

Lastly, backup your data. In the event that you do experience a total hard drive failure, you wouldn’t want to find yourself out of the frying pan, straight into the fire – especially now that we’ve warned you.