Moving Your Computer - Lenovo ThinkStation P500 Manual

• Clean out your Inbox, Sent Items, and Deleted Items folders in your e-mail application on a regular basis.
• Back up critical data regularly on removable media memory, such as discs and USB storage devices,
and store the removable media in a safe location. The frequency of making backup copies depends on
how critical the data is to you or your business.
• Back up your entire hard disk drive on a regular basis.
• Keep your computer software, device drivers, and operating system up-to-date. See "Keeping your
computer current " on page 51.
• Keep a log book. Entries might include major software or hardware changes, device-driver updates,
intermittent problems and what you did to resolve them, and other issues you might have experienced.
The cause of a problem might be change in hardware, change in software, or any other actions that might
have taken place. A log book can help you or a Lenovo technician determines the cause of a problem.
• Create Product Recovery discs. See "Creating and using recovery media" on page 69 for more information
about using Product Recovery discs to restore the hard disk drive to the factory-default settings.
• Create rescue media using discs or USB storage devices as early as possible. You can use a rescue
medium to recover from failures that prevent you from gaining access to the Windows environment or the
Rescue and Recovery workspace on your hard disk drive.

Moving your computer

Take the following precautions before moving your computer:
1. Back up all files and data from the hard disk drive. There are a variety of backup programs available
commercially. If you use the Windows 7 operating system, Lenovo provides the Rescue and Recovery
program to help you back up and restore data. See "Performing backup and recovery operations"
on page 70.
2. Remove all media from your computer, such as discs, USB storage devices, memory cards, and so on.
3. Turn off the computer and all attached devices. Your hard disk drive automatically parks the read/write
head in a nondata area. This prevents damage to the hard disk drive.
4. Unplug the power cords from electrical outlets.
5. Disconnect communication cables, such as modem or network cables, from the outlets first, and then
disconnect the other ends from the computer.
6. Note where any remaining cables are attached to the computer; then, remove them.
7. If you saved the original shipping cartons and packing materials, use them to pack the units. If you are
using different cartons, cushion the units to avoid damage.
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ThinkStation P500 and P700 User Guide