It will slow your machine down but not noticeably. Preventive Maintenance Talk about rebuilding the desktop and zapping PRAM, also defragmenting disks. Netscape user's must clear their disk cache. Microsoft Office 4.2x users need a patch. Backups Another thing to worry about is making sure important files are backed up.
All machines freeze or crash occasionally, and there is always the possibility of losing data.
DD disks cost about 1 dollar and hold between 400-600 pages of information. If you consider how long it would take you to recreate that amount of information you will see how cheap it is to backup. Some even work unattended so you could backup every night. Escaping from Machine Crashes. There are a couple tricks to try before just turning the computer off.