Good computer ventilation

I have seen nice computers used at the office or the factory. They are bought maybe because the old computers are not able to perform or degraded and maybe also bought to accommodate new staff. But after a while I do see a similar pattern. When, a person workload gets more and more, by the day. The paperwork piles up on their desk or bottom of their desk, and the papers are stack very close to the computers. Same thing applies for the factory computers, carton of boxes of wood and metal plates are always kept near and close to the computers.

And at times, offices want to look neat and tidy. They build a cabinet box to house the computer unit to hide it. The cabinet that houses those computer is so tightly compact that the computer fit just enough for it to go in, and though they have made holes for air to flow out at the back, the cabinet is pushed very close to the wall. Is it because they want to save space?

Computers need to BREATHE, YES! You heard me right. They need to breathe not like us, computer takes in cooler air, when the cpu fan blows towards the cpu chip that churns out heat from processing data, and the hot air is pushed out. Then there is a fan at the power supply unit which cools down the circuit and heatsink inside. Sometimes, a bigger fan will be installed on the inside casing to draw cooler air into the casing.

You can have a lot of fans installed into the computer, but if the entire intake is blocked by stacking papers or boxes at the side and back of the computer, the fan will find it hard to draw in cool air.

Have you tried going in a small storeroom with the door close and try to arrange stuff inside, It would be save to say within a minute or more you will start to sweat and after a few minutes, stuffy and gets hotter, why?

The hot air is circulation inside the storeroom and not able to get out fast enough, now try to open the door and you will feel fresh cool air rushing in and no more hot air. When you breathe in the air, it is cool and you will find that, you sweat less and your body begins to cool down.

Same thing that is happening to the computer, if cooler air is blocked from going in, the hot air will circulate inside and it and if it gets too hot computer might shutdown as it has a built in thermostat to monitor cpu chip heat, to keep it from overheating. Too much heat might cause other hardware problems to the main board, to the capacitors and hard disk as well in the long run.

Always give enough space, a simple touch of your hand onto the casing top or side of it can tell you if it is warm or hot. If it is hot, then not enough ventilation is provided and you need to do something about it.

It especially needs good ventilation when some are switched on 24/7, all the time. If you have a chance, try to visit a big server room or an IT facility room, the place is not only clean its FREEEEEEZING cold!

Backup your data, please

Many times, when someone needs help in most cases is while data get corrupted. Previously, when floppy disk (1.44MB) was used, corrupt data will show CRC error (cyclic redundancy check). It might be a scratch on the drive or mold grown or floppy disk drive head is dirty. We had a lot of problem back then, to save the data.

Nowadays as storage becomes larger, more data can be stored and makes a person more dependent to keep a lot of data on one place. And when storage is accumulated till it's full they will find it hard to backup.

The data which most people are concern with, which i come across:

1. Photos taken during holiday trips
2. Photos taken as proof of work completion (field work or site projects)
3. Accounting software data.
4. Excel files with formula calculation on staff salary/over-time/allowance or account bookkeeping.
5. Word files of legal documents and company profile
6. E-mails in outlook express, microsoft outlook, live mail, eudora, etc..
7. Contacts and data sync from mobile phone to computer.
8. Music and video files

 Reasons for not backing up data that i hear most often:

1. Real busy no time to do it.
2. Too much data to backup, don't know where to start.
3. Thought the computer will backup itself.
4. Always delaying to buy backup storage media, no budget.
5. My IT guy will do it for me.
6. Data is huge, take a long time to backup, so i do it once a month or maybe once every 3 months.
7. Not good at using the computer, afraid i will delete something, i only open files, amend and save the work given.
8. Backing up data is not my job (most frequent with management staff in office environment)
9. Does backup but don't do a proper backup as data is all over the place in the computer hard disk.
10. Backup data is difficult, because every time a change is made, means have to make a copy and overwrite the data on my storage media, if not data won't be up to date, double work, very troublesome.
11. Nobody taught me to backup (in the office, they can download video and song media and transfer to the external drive to bring home. Isn't that a form of backup?).

 Ways of backing up data:

1. CD/ DVD can store 600MB/ 4.7GB. Suitable for small file backup.
2. Thumb drive/Pen drive from 1GB to 64GB. Suitable for being portable and light weight. Easy to carry around in pocket or put into handbag.
3. External drive (portable hard disk). More storage up to 2TB (2000GB). Can keep a lot of data. Will take some time to copy if data amount is huge.
4. Small files up to around 15MB to 20MB at a time, can be saved at e-mail server.
5. Can rent space on online storage to keep data.
6. NAS (Network-attached storage). Need to do setting on it once, to set which folder and schedule to backup. Can access to it anywhere around the world if both side have internet access, log in to the system open files and edit. Have other good features. Will auto backup. Hard disk size depends on model type and most will have 2 hard disk or more. 

Those that have problems with missing or corrupted data  will understand the pain of rebuilding their work done from scratch. They will spend long hours going through items and to key in data back to the computer system software. Please do make it a habit to do backup at least once a week or if you could daily, would be best if you are going to have huge data.

Doing it daily might use up not more than 10 minutes of your time, but rebuilding missing data can take up many many many hours and sleepless nights.

Saving Files to Documents and Folders

There have been many times, a lot of people that work on the computer and find out that they don't maintain their files saved and folders created properly. Some were saved in My Documents some in Downloads, some in C drive, some in D drive, some in Public folder and even some in Windows directory. Files were all over the computer hard disk and is not arranged, so when it is time to look for it they get into trouble.

So the fastest way of looking for the file is, if you remember the name of the file you can always go to Start and on top of the start button will be the Search programs and files and type in the file name and click on the search icon beside it in windows 7.

In the old days (and even today) before computer were available, i asked, how do the files and folders were arrange to the filing cabinet? Normally the paper would be arrange by name or date and then kept in a file for the person or company name. And they are arranged in alphabetical order in the filing cabinet. Or if you want to separate out personal and company then you could, a bit more work but faster to find.

Same with the computer, if you think that My Documents is a good to save all your documents and files, and making it the main filing cabinet the please do so. If not, and you want to make D drive as your main filing cabinet you can do so as well.

But please make sure to do create folders and sub-folders properly. Example:
Inside My Documents Folder
You create a main folder name for COMPANY A
Inside the folder (sub-folder) one for Director 1, one for Director 2

So anytime you draft a file for director 1 and try to save it, you have to save as and look for My Documents then COMPANY A then Director 1.

There are times when we create too many documents we don't remember when it was done and when we save a file with the same name it will overwrite the existing file. If you would want to keep the existing file the you have to give a different name.

What i like to normally do is to name my files or folder using the date format.
Example
year first (2013) month second (10) and date third (01) and a name last (companyA).
So it will look like this 20131001companyA. 

So if the file is not there first thing you can search is the year like 2013 and all words containing 2013 will appear.


I have seen this format many a times while doing scanning and also while transferring images from digital camera to the computer and find that it is a good format to use and it has never fail me yet. So you might want to give it a try.

The real purpose is when you arrange and do proper file management, you will know exactly, what date the document was created and where the files are stored or kept and will not need help to find those files.