10 Best Ways to Use Your PC While You're Sleeping or at Work

Posted 02/12/2010 at 9:00am | by Mark Edward Soper

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Check Your Hard Drive for Errors with Chkdsk+Defrag

While malware and spyware can deep-six your computer's performance, so can problems with your hard disk's structure. Use the dynamic duo of chkdsk and defrag to check your hard disks for errors and defragment files to keep your storage in good shape.

Chkdsk can be run from the command prompt, and by using command-prompt switches when you schedule chkdsk to run, you have a great deal of control over how chkdsk works. If you want to repair disk errors on the C: (system) drive, you'll need to schedule chkdsk to run at startup.

You can shut down and restart Windows automatically using Task Scheduler, enabling you to run Chkdsk on the system drive at startup. You should run Chkdsk before you run Defrag on a given drive to assure that files are not being moved to corrupt portions of the disk.

In Windows 7, you can select multiple drives for defragmenting, which realigns small file fragments into larger contiguous blocks. This enables faster file reads and writes, especially on drives with frequent changes, such as the drive you use for temporary or swap files or drives with frequent modifications to data files.

Backup Your PC!

You can configure most commercial backup programs as well as Windows's own backup programs to run on a schedule. To make scheduled backups work properly, keep the following in mind:

• Use an external hard disk or network location that's big enough for the backup (you won't be around to flip DVDs or removable media in and out of a backup drive). Use the default compression setting for the best combination of backup performance and backup size.
• Use the backup scheduler included in the backup software.
• Make sure your backup location is ready to receive the backup. With an external hard disk, make sure it's turned on and connected to your PC. With a network backup, make sure the remote drive or server is connected to the network – preferably, to a wired rather than a wireless connection.
• If you have time, verify the backup.
• For best performance, use gigabit Ethernet for network backups and eSATA or USB 3.0 for local drive backups.

To learn more about using Windows 7 backup, see our Windows 7 feature focus article. 

Process Photos and Transcode Videos

If you’re a serious digital photographer, you already know that shooting in RAW mode provides much more control over exposure, white balance, and other factors than shooting in JPEG. However, when it comes to sharing or printing your photos, JPEG rules. Cut out the tedium of converting your photos manually by using automation features in your photo editing software.

With Photoshop Elements and Adobe Camera RAW, you can use Process Multiple Files to convert RAW files into virtually any other format supported by Photoshop Elements, apply quick fixes, resize images, rename files, and add labels.

With Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Camera RAW, you can use the Image Processor to automate the conversion process and run actions. If you still use Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Camera RAW, you can also use Image Processor.

Depending upon what type of video you're encoding or transcoding, there are many choices, all of which take time better spent when you're away from your PC. Here are some of our tutorials and product guides:

How To: Download, Save and Convert Flash Video to Play on your iPod or DVD Player

Ultimate Guide to Playing and Transcoding Downloaded Videos

The Last DVD and Blu-Ray Ripping Guide You'll Ever Need

The Power User's Guide to Video Encoding with Handbrake

The Top Transcoding Apps for Watching Content on Consoles

Schedule Bittorrent Downloads and Pre-Load Steam Games

Whether you use FTP or Bittorrent to transfer files or play games delivered via Steam, you're pushing a lot of information through your home network to the Internet (and vice-versa). Here's how you can take advantage of away from your PC time to handle heavy bit-pushing.

If you use file transfer protocol (FTP) to shuffle files around, you know there are plenty of freeware versions to choose from. Unfortunately, just about all of those that include a scheduler feature will cost you a few bucks. One that won't cost you anything is WinSCP. Use its scripting feature to schedule file transfers. For a low-cost FTP program that doesn't require scripting to schedule transfers, consider ProSoft FTP Scheduler Standard Edition (about $25, 15 day trial).

Want to schedule Bittorrent transfers? Check out the Scheduler feature built into uTorrent. Scheduler allows you to adjust transfer speeds, go idle, or upload only at the times you select. For a  tutorial, see page 7 of our own Paul Lilly's 20 Essential Tricks and Skills Every BitTorrent User Should Know. Be sure to see the comments for tips on using Dropbox and PeerBlock to improve uTorrent performance.

While Steam doesn't provide a way to schedule your downloads, you can pause and restart a game download whenever you want.