What’s Saved on Your Work Computer Right Now?

 

What would happen if you lost access to your work computer, completely, tomorrow?

Assuming you are like most of the population, you have a lot of things saved on it, which are for your own use. Perhaps the spreadsheet you were using to track your workouts?

I know that I have some old brainstorming documents for committees I am on, before I realized the beauty of Google Drive. I have a bunch of pictures that I’ve used on the blog, and I have some spreadsheets that I’ve built for doing things like comparing house purchase options.  I have publisher files that are originals for poster formats that I use for promoting events saved all over the place. In my email account, I have contacts for people that I wouldn’t know how to contact, off the top of my head.

The scary part is, I don’t truly know what is on there.

If I lost access, it would absolutely stress me out.

That’s what’s happened to some people lately, at my work. They have been laid off. They get half an hour to empty their desks and clear their computers and that’s it. For some others, when they resign to go elsewhere, the company determines that what they are working on is too confidential, so they are paid out for the notice they gave, but are also asked to leave that day.

Now, we can’t always see these things coming and we don’t know when we might decide to leave for a new opportunity.

To put it another way, when was the last time that you backed up your hard drive?

It’s a relatively simple solution, to ensure that you don’t ever find yourself in a situation where you end up locked out of your work accounts. Simply set out 15 minutes to half an hour to go through your saved files and put whatever you need to back up into a Dropbox account.

Easier said, than done, right?

Just go do it. Take five minutes before your work day, each day this week, and get it done.

Even Better – Get A Bonus 500MB of Storage!

If you have never used Dropbox before, it is “storage in the cloud.” Aka, you upload files and they are saved on a server somewhere in a far-off place. You can access them from any computer by logging in.  Simple.

Even better, Dropbox has a referral program.  If you sign up using one of the links in this post, they will give you a bonus 500MB of free storage space. More is better, right? The greatest part, in my mind at least, is that they also give me a bonus 500MB! You get a bonus, I get a bonus, free space for everyone!  Once you have signed up, you can share your link with friends and get the same bonus.  Awesomesauce.

Hop to It

It will give you some peace of mind that you didn’t even realize you were missing.  Take what’s saved on your work computer, and save it in the cloud.