Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I run these tasks?

This depends on how heavily you use your computer (which affects how quickly things like fragmentation will have an effect), and on how critical your data is. As a guideline, the following is what we do on our computers. All of these tasks are scheduled to run at night, when we're not using the machines:

  • Run a backup every night to an external hard drive (we also synchronize critical data in real-time between computers and to online storage using Microsoft's LiveMesh).
  • Run disk cleanup once a week.
  • Run defragmentation once a week.
  • Run chkdsk once a month, but we only check the results if we suspect that there's a problem with the disk (but running it anyway cleans up any minor errors).
  • Have Microsoft Update set to automatically install high-priority/important updates to Microsoft products.
  • Periodically check for optional updates to Microsoft products, but generally only to make sure we have the latest fixes if we run into a problem.
  • Keep System Restore enabled, but only use it when we run into problems.

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