today i pulled out the bad hard drive and later today we are sending it off so that i will get a nice new working hard drive in its place. upon opening my case i realized, oops i haven’t dusted in there in a while. ALWAYS remember to clean your computer guts! seriously… this new high air flow case i have should be called a high dust flow case because it was caked in dust, and i was a bit embarrassed to look at it! thankfully no one was there to see how awful it looked but i should know better.
cleaning out your computer case can help reduce the changes of serious computer mishaps. dust can cause problems with your fan speed, can mess up your expensive hardware, and can slow down your entire system. thankfully this wasn’t bad enough to cause any issues (the hard drive was a software malfunction not a physical one) but i shouldn’t have let it go that long.
if you’ve never cleaned dust out of your computer case, its really simple. my dad taught me how a few years ago and even my mom knows how to do it. all you need is a soft bristle brush, like a paint brush, move the computer into an area with some ventilation (because dust flying around sucks for your lungs as much as it does your computer), open the case up and just sweep away with the brush like its a broom. yes you can use a can of air on stuff but i have never been able to blast away dust as well as i can remove it with a brush.
this goes for laptops too! especially since your heatsink can get clogged and completely shut down your computer. don’t forget the awful photo of my heatsink dustbunny from a couple of years ago! eww…
