Do step 2 alone. That'll fix the excessive space. Once-off shrinks of the log aren't harmful providing you don't shrink to 0 and you have a sensible growth increment

Please note: 9 year old thread

That'll do the job nicely.

I promise, from what I've seen of your roads, they're in good shape.
I remember a tour group in Scotland, the driver was cursing about the poor quality of the...

Can you post the CREATE TABLE, CREATE INDEX statements and the actual plan please?

This is part of the highway that's under renovation

South-bound on the upper level, north-bound on the lower.

For years now, whenever it rains there will be waterfalls across the...

Transaction logs or error logs?

Looks like your model database is corrupt. You can replace it (data and log) with a copy from another server running the same version (and service pack) as this one.

No. Backup to a file. Ignore devices.

BACKUP DATABASE DBName
TO DISK =  <file name here>

The file name can be a variable, so you can build up...

I strongly recommend NOT appending backups to the same file. Makes it really easy to lose all your backups instead of one.
Each one to its own file, preferably with...