Recently I made a post on how to test a used laptop before purchasing, now the question is how do you take care your laptop to prevent it from getting damage?  While this guide might not give you a lasting solution, it will surely reduce the chance of your PC being faulty. 


1. Do not hibernate your PC

I repeat do not hibernate, you might be wondering why? When you hibernate your laptop, it saves it current state to your hard drive however doing this put your laptop and hard drive  at risk .

A lot of laptop motherboard have been fried due to hibernating, apart from this, it slows down your laptop which means killing your hard drive softly. 

While some users have never experienced such scenario,its adviceable you save your work and shutdown, doing this will save you the trouble of getting a new hard drive or motherboard. 

2. Stop over charging your the battery   

A lot us are fond of always leaving the laptop plug in to the socket, this is a bad way of charging your laptop. 

Overcharging weakens the battery cell there by reducing the battery life, apart from this you might not be there to quickly unplug your laptop when you see a high voltage electric supply. 

 Always charge your laptop to 100%,when it's fully charged  you have to unplug it from the socket. Even when you're using it, unplug it and plugin  later  when the battery is down. 

Doing this will save you from buying a new motherboard or charger. 


3. Use original charger and chord


The AC adapter is very important to your laptop, without it  there's no way you're going to charge the battery or use the laptop. 


A lot of bad charger have lead to a fried motherboard, when power supply is high, it pass through the charger to the laptop and this will definitely affect the motherboard and without the MOBO, no laptop. 

If you know your AC adapter is not good, I'll advice you get a good one.

Now let me show you how to locate an original charger and chord. 


1. The chord is always strong and tick 


2. The charger wire is always strong and tick 


3. It is more  expensive than the new one. 


How to know a new charger 

When you buy use laptop, most users always sell with new charger, simply because it's cheap, however this new charger always led to damage motherboard. 


1. The chord is not tick and it looks shiny 


2. The charger is not tick, it looks shiny 


3. It is cheaper 


4. It get hot, to the entend you will think  it will explode. 

Now, that you've known how to differentiate between an original charger and a new one, check to see if yours is the new one and quickly get the original charger and chord before it does any damage to your laptop  charging IC or fry your motherboard.


4.  Keep your laptop away from dust.

The Fan helps to cool the motherboard from too much heat, whether you use it indoor or outdoor, the fan attract dust that occupy the heat sink thereby stopping the heat from the heat sink from going out properly. 

When this happens, your laptop begin to shut down randomly ,apart from that  dust also leads to a faulty keyboard as it get into the small space between the keys. 

Just like you can't stop using your laptop, you can't prevent dust from entering your laptop but you can reduce it. 

Get a small bag which you can put it in after using, after shutting down place a small towel or paper that will cover the keyboard before you close the laptop. 


Also, avoid eating or drinking while using your laptop to prevent small particles of the food or water from entering the keyboard, placing the PC on your bed,couch or rug is also a bad idea. 

Now that you've made to this stage, I'll say congratulations because this guide will definitely help you to reduce the chance of your laptop being faulty. 


It lefts for you to follow up what you've read to avoid getting your laptop fried, be it a new laptop or used one, if it's not properly taken care of it will develop unccessarry fault. 


Do you have any maintenance guide? Kindly share so others can benefit it.

 http://udemzytech..com/2016/10/4-tips-to-prevent-your-laptop-from-damage.html?m=1

1. Do not hibernate your PC

If this was true the option to activate it would not exist then would it? If however this was a method they found out later was disadvantageous it would've gotten discontinued but guess what? Even windows 10 still has the option for hibernation. This, I believe is a consumer theory widely accepted out of ignorance.

2. Stop over charging your the battery

Explorers debunked this a week or so ago. Update knowledge on this.

The rest look accurate to my knowledge however I would use this chance to dispel some more misconceptions.

Do not over-format your hard drive: I don't believe this would have a disastrous effect on one's hard drive apart from minor wear and tear. Don't forget hard drives are very durable to begin with -- most face more punishment than this during product testing phases. Besides, who has the power to sit through multiple drive formats in the first place? Hard drives were created for storing data not repeated rinse and repeats.

Defragment one's hard drive sparingly: Another notion I feel is erroneous. People who transfer and deal with large files face cluttering of their file system from time to time. Defragmentation is the only method I can think of which makes one's drive work at near-optimum performance. The second even better option is moving files from the hard drive and storing them permanently on removable forms of storage.

Thanks for the post...

I don't know why it's still there but a lot of laptop have gone down due to hibernation, it might be a myth to you but those who have experienced it understand what I'm talking about.

the reason why this happens I don't know, I guess it's due to our environment, too much heat everywhere or something else, however it can damage your motherboard or hard drive when you hibernate often.


2. I'll like to get the link to the article or video.


You said over formatting causes minor wear as tear, don't you think that will affect the hard drive on the long run?

hard drive not very durable, except if you're using a SSD hard drive they tend to last longer than the normal SATA.

Thanks for your contribution

https://www.nairaland.com/3404492/whats-effect-plugging-laptops-long
The thread which answers the question if laptops can get overcharged.

https://www.quora(dot)com/What-if-I-always-put-my-laptop-on-hibernation-instead-of-turning-it-off-Is-it-right-to-do-so-or-does-it-harm-the-laptop
A fairly recent question on whether hibernating a system as opposed to putting it off has any downsides.

https://www.quora(dot)com/Does-Hard-Disk-drive-formatting-on-frequent-basis-damage-it
Funny enough it was an opinion given by a friend of mine who works on computers which made me feel formatting repeatedly was bad. Here it shows (2016) formatting is no different from reading and writing onto the hard drive; no damage of any sort done.

I disagree with points 1&2

1. Define "killing your hard drive"... hibernation writes to the HDD before hibernating and reads from it before it resumes...do you know how many read/write operations happen while the laptop is on? More than the number of times one may use the hibernate feature. SO hibernation is a safe operation if not it would have been discontinued..

2. Unless you have a laptop from the 1980's, circuitry in modern laptops stop charging the battery when the battery is full and switches to using the power adapter. Keeping the laptop plugged in is better as the battery cells degrade faster from charging and discharging. The only time to fully charge and fully discharge a battery is to calibrate it so the accurate battery levels can be calculated this isn't meant to be done frequently.

cool ..I'll read the links, talking about over formatting I don't know about that,though have heard people saying such.

thanks for the links

AKBliv010:
I disagree with points 1&2

1. Define "killing your hard drive"... hibernation writes to the HDD before hibernating and reads from it before it resumes...do you know how many read/write operations happen while the laptop is on? More than the number of times one may use the hibernate feature. SO hibernation is a safe operation if not it would have been discontinued..

2. Unless you have a laptop from the 1980's, circuitry in modern laptops stop charging the battery when the battery is full and switches to using the power adapter. Keeping the laptop plugged in is better as the battery cells degrade faster from charging and discharging. The only time to fully charge and fully discharge a battery is to calibrate it so the accurate battery levels can be calculated this isn't meant to be done frequently.

Thanks for your contribution....