The Miniskirt Murder Bare Minimum Guide to Life #4

This post is less of a bare minimum guide than it is a fair warning. Now that your stuff is safe, and your office is organized, it’s time to get productive on the internet. Conveniently, you have no excuse not to do this, because if you’re here, you’re on.

If you’re like me, your hard drive has crashed. After making Geek Squad $500 richer, you promise never to not have backups again. And then time goes on, and yeah… um… I have one copy of everything, kept on a computer which I drop every so often.

Analysis paralysis is why my stuff is not backed up. There are so many options! What are the features? How much does it cost? I’m sure that, just like the subjects of the rest of these posts, there is a perfect system out there. The vulnerable state of my electronic files would indicate that I have no desire to actually figure that out. So, I’m going to save us all some trouble, and suggest this quick and dirty (and free) way to minimize the headache when your hard drive crosses over:

1. Go to dropbox.com and download the little genius folder onto your desktop. Get the free version. Ignore your perfectionist protest, “But I have so much sstttttuuuff!!! worth protecting. Maybe I should get the paid version, but how much is it, can I get more space for less elsewhere?” etc. You’ll see why in a moment.

2. When you create a new document, save it in your dropbox- your online storage vault accessible anywhere, including this little icon on your computer. I don’t know about you, but other than having a pretty awesome file naming system (I am organized in some aspects of my existence), all my stuff sits in one main folder on my computer anyway. If your hard drive crashes anytime soon (and if you read this post and don’t do this, you can be sure that the universe* will screw you sometime soon), you’ll at least have your most recent stuff in a pinch (aka, while you wait for geek squad to get the rest of it). For the average computer using person, the free amount of space is plenty for new projects. All this benefit in less than two minutes, none of which will be spent organizing your old stuff. You’re welcome.

3. Assuming there are old things you would want, when you get an extra fifteen seconds, you can do a wholesale drag and drop (this is why I like dropbox. Drag. Drop. Easy. Contrast Google Docs. Nightmare.) of the main folder you save your stuff in on your computer to the dropbox. And if you have too much stuff for the free account, then you can start getting crazy with the comparison shopping of backup space. K? K. And please, email me if you get to that step. I will be amazed to know someone who actually does this.

I promise you’ll be so happy you did this. Free. Two minutes. It absolutely cannot be easier to save yourself a gigantic, expensive headache later on… such as the night before an 80 page article on the intersection of business method patents and mutual fund taxation is due. Not that anyone read that shit anyway, but still. I wanted to die.