Backups, good for both your horse and your computer!

Horses and computers require maintenance.

Clinton Anderson says that teaching your horse to backup well is vital to having a well trained horse and leads to him improving in many ways. “You cannot back a horse up too much” Clinton says.

Well I beginning to get the same message about computers. They too cannot be backed up too much. When was the last time you backed up your important files and photos? How sick would you feel if they just disappeared? How important are your files to your horse business?

Last Monday morning I started up my computer with the idea that I was going to get through my long to do list. But my computer promptly colicled and kicked up the blue screen of death. Well this being the third time in about eight weeks a sick feeling hit me.

I turned off my computer and then tried to turn it back on, but no go, it only made funny noises. I dialed up the local PC doctor and he came and spent many hours over two days opening and closing and starting and stopping my machine. He did manage to get my computer back to her feet and running again. He told me I am feeding her too many programs and files and she is over weight! In fact he told me I had the fullest computer he has seen in a long while.

Well I was super lucky that my hard drive was only suffering a bellyache and it wasn’t fatal. I was able to make an up-to-date backup file once he got the computer working again. My last backup was over a week old and I had added tons of work files to the computer since then. I felt as sick as my computer thinking about the work I could have loss because I didn’t have a current backup file.

In this past year I have heard from quite a few people telling me their hard drives died and they lost mountains of important and irreplaceable files. Please be warned and start to schedule regular computer backups.

Here are a couple of backup tips…

• When you make your backups you want to make a least two sets of backup disks and alternate between them. The reason is so you’ll still have the previous backup to turn to if something goes wrong during the backup process. You should also store one of your backups in a safe place away from your home/office in case of a flood, fire, or an act of God, destroying both your computer and your backup disks.
• Make sure you have backup software that is easy to use so you will actually use it. I am using Windows XP Pro Backup Utility right now. But I am going to buy Acronis True Image 10 Home complete backup and restore software. True Image has a lot of computer people that like it and it has won a lot of Awards and has good/great reviews. It can create an exact copy of your PC for a full backup or backup only your important data and application settings — your choice! Sounds good to me.
• Whatever backup software you use make sure to verify the backup by marking the Validate Backup Archive button. You want to make sure it made a GOOD backup. I have tried a couple of other computer backup programs that messed up and didn’t save all my files and that is the last thing you want.
• If your backup software can be set to do daily backups set it to because you don’t want to forget to do this important computer maintenance operation.

If you use True Image I would like to hear your thoughts on it.