Strategies to Prevent IT Hardware Failure
IT hardware failure has the potential to cause widespread disruption to any organization’s workflows. From a failing hard drive causing data loss, to a broken router resulting in network instability, any piece of infrastructure that malfunctions can have major impacts on your productivity.
This article aims to provide some common strategies to avoid damaging your hardware.
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Keep your Devices away from heat
Heat is one of the main factors of long term hardware damage. Computers, hard drives, and servers are all susceptible to extreme temperatures, especially if they are kept in areas without proper ventilation or under direct sunlight.
Overheating hardware can result in slowdowns, instability, CPU throttling, and ultimately hardware failure. While you do not need to keep your equipment in an isolated room of near freezing temperature, it is important to keep them in areas that allow them to perform optimally.
Room temperatures below 25 degrees Celsius and enough space around them for proper air circulation are acceptable environments to keep your hardware.
Routine Cleaning
Dust, while seemingly insignificant in the short term, can become a major issue for computer circulation. IT hardware’s cooling system almost always rely on adequate airflow. Over time, dust can accumulate on the computers’ fan intakes, causing them to clog and blocking airflow. This can in turn make it more difficult for the hardware to manage its internal heat, resulting ultimately in overheating and long term damages.
It can be difficult to diagnose a dust-covered computer without physically opening the case and checking its contents. However, symptoms such as slowdowns or instability when multiple programs are open can be early indicators that a computer is suffering from overheating problems.
Human Error
Best practices of handling computers can help them stay operational for longer. Human error such as incorrect shut down and restart processes, and poor practices when taking physical care of machines, can cause long term hardware damage to end user machines. It is important to educate your team on the best practices of handling computer equipment in order to ensure that potential risk for damages is kept to a minimum.
Neglecting Failing Hardware
When a hardware item has reached its end of life, it is important to replace it with new hardware. A failing component such as a power supply has the potential of causing additional damage to other components such as hard drives if they cause system instability. It is important to deal with these issues early to prevent issues getting worse over time.
Don’t let your IT hardware become a thorn in your organization’s side. GIGE Corporation has over 30 years of experience managing IT infrastructure for Canadian organizations. Call us at +1 888 366 4443 or email info@gige.ca to get started with us today.