It's about time!

I've been decidedly good lately. And it has nothing do to with horses.

*waits as approximately 3/4 of her readers leave, suddenly disinterested*

I backed up my computer. For the first time EVER. In my life.

My lap top was purchased in 2005. That's positively ancient in computer years. I've NEVER had a problem with it. It just keeps plugging away. It's a Mac, that originally had the Panther OSX on it, that I upgraded to Tiger shortly after I purchased (Thank goodness, as most programs still run on Tiger and NOTHING runs on Panther anymore.....). Even now, with the feet missing underneath, the rubber stoppers at the top of the screen gone, the mechincal fasterner broken, and a funky tilted look to the screen because the hinge has gone screwy.....it still works like a charm.

But lately I've been thinking - would it work faster if I got all the pictures etc from past years off the computer? How devastated would I be if I lost all my pictures? How about my portfolio and application materials? The wise thing would be to backup my computer.

So, I got myself an external hard drive. It was easy, it wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it would be. I plugged it in. It backed up my ENTIRE computer. I then dragged all the files I wanted to delete off onto the hard drive a second time, in a different folder. Then I burned all those files to a disk to back up the external hard drive. Then I deleted them. Five years worth of pictures, documents, and movies (ok - so there was only like three movies, but you get my point).

My computer now has 4 GB of free space!!!!!! Whoo hoo! My external hard drive has like 250GB of free space....mmmm......I'm thinking this was an AWESOME idea.

Now I'm busy exporting the blog to my computer in preparation for moving the blog to a new location (don't worry - I'll keep you all updated).

All in all, backing up my computer, backing up the files I wanted to delete a second time, burning the CD's of secondary back ups, and deleting the files took me.....4 hours. In the future, I think by taking 1 hour several times during the year, I can streamline the process.

So as a fellow blogger and endurance rider (who likes to keep pics of her rides for ever and ever) I want to ask you'all a question - when was the last time you backed up YOUR system?