1. Cardinal rule: like any electrical instrument, keep away from water at all times. The thought of Tweeting from your Jacuzzi or blogging from a bubble bath is very sexy, but can result in death by electric shock, or exorbitant laptop repair bills.

2. Despite solid rectangular exterior, laptops should not be mistaken for sturdy props. Avoid using laptop as a weapon, flyswatter, tea tray or sports equipment.

3. Resist the temptation to get creative with radiant laptop warmth. Hot laptop air is not a suitable means of cooking breakfast or drying hands.

4. Don’t forget to pick your laptop up when finished checking email on the tarmac.

5. Keep out of reach of children. Don’t listen to advertisers: the point of buying kiddie laptops is actually to redirect innocent kiddie curiosity away from your baby (baby being laptop).

6. You cannot afford to have both your computer and coffee in the form of rogue portable objects. Since you have chosen a mobile laptop, you must invest in a coffee stabilization mechanism, or secure cup holder, so that the two remain separate at all times.

7. Remember it is not your laptop’s fault if you call up infuriating, rage-inducing content onto the screen. If you see incriminating evidence against yourself or your partner on Facebook do not shoot/punch/throw/smash the messenger. Also, if your laptop is acting up you don’t need to resort to physical violence.

8. When surfing the internet try your best to stay away from content of an adult nature, as it often comes with laptop destroying viruses.

9. Secure laptop in a locked cupboard or safe if planning to get drunk, as altered state of consciousness can encourage behaviour along the lines of some of the points above.

10. Above all, know that laptops and cats are sworn enemies.

These 10 tips will ensure a long and happy future for you and your laptop – follow them for success. Unless you want to break your laptop like this guy. If this advice fails to assist and your laptop ceases to function, a reliable RAID data recovery service can help you out.

I am planning on spending some time writing about all the questions I get from users regarding hard drive failures, desktop computers not starting up, laptop data recovery because of having a blue screen or external drive data recovery because of beeping noises. I will try and cram as many of these phrases and elaborate on them.

The first topic, or say phrase I get asked is “On power up laptop fails to recognise the hard disk and fails to boot up, clunking sound can be heard”. This can happen due to the laptop being accidentally dropped, faulty power cable being inserted, power surges, coffee spillage and hey I have even heard people forgetting their laptops on top of the car and then reversing over them. All of these accounts basically affect the hard disk drive; this contains all those important emails, word documents and images. We can recover data from most of these situations.

When you hear the clicking noise from a laptop hard drive the read heads that float over the platters have failed. This sound can be loud or very faint, but either way when this noise is heard, the best action is to switch the laptop off as the drive has failed. Being left to run can cause serious data loss.

The clicking noise can also be a firmware issue with the hard drive, and not always a mechanical problem. By no means does it make the recovery any easier though, the firmware I am referring to is not a simple update you can download from the manufacturer, but firmware that occupies the Servo or Service track on the hard disk platters. P-list or G-list areas contain modules and these become corrupt over time or due to electrical surges.

If you have any questions or even just want to have a chat about your storage needs and faults, please don’t hesitate to ask us.