Hardware / system maintenance for a private computer.

Question

Hello people,
As the topic suggest, I want to know what kind of maintenance I should could (should) do with my computer.
It's a pretty basic laptop, with a spinning drive.
I've read the wikis entry on hardware maintenance, but I only talks about fsck, when I look at that, it
says that it is done during the boot process, so you don't really have to run it.
Of course you should also have an up to date system, and not throw you computer around.
It that really there is to it, or should one take more actions?
(I know that hardware will fail at some point, and that I should keep backup etc, I'm mostly
wondering about prolonging life, not making it immortal)
Thanks!

Answer 1

I use a cooling pad under the computer which makes it more comfortable to use and increases air circulation. Nothing fancy - it just raises the laptop up at an angle. (I have a version for home and a smaller portable version which raises it just a tad for use elsewhere.)
It won't prolong life, but running smartmontools with regular tests can alert you to problems with a hard drive before it fails. In one case this gave me about 24-48 hours notice and enabled me to lose nothing. You need to look at the test output and not just the overall health status, though, as it can say "passed" even when the rest of the output shows the drive is definitely terminal.