How to Keep Your Office Files Safe During a Remodeling Project

Guest Blogger #499,  Entry #1146, May 4, 2012

Remodeling projects are messy, loud and usually involve a good deal of banging, beating and moving things around. It’s always worth taking precautions to protect your things during a remodeling project, but office remodeling projects require special considerations.

If something is damaged during a living room upgrade, you can usually find ways to repair the damage or replace the damaged items. Office remodeling projects require special consideration because office files are not as easily replaceable. This goes for both physical files stored in cabinets and digital files stored on your computer.

Planning an office remodel soon?

Image via: Pinterest

Keeping Digital Files Safe

Digital files are easy to keep safe during a remodeling project because digital files can be moved, copied and backed up fairly easily. The biggest danger your digital files face during an office remodeling project is damage to your computer. If your computer is damaged by water, paint or a dropped light fixture, your digital files can disappear forever.

There are two things I recommend for keeping your digital files safe:

• Online backups
• Local Backups

Online Backups

First, make an online backup of your digital files. Online backups are stored on remote servers far away and are immune to any disasters that might occur during a remodeling project. Keep your files stored online and they’ll still be there no matter what happens.

Your best bet for online storage is to find a website that specializes in online file storage. Companies such as Backblaze, Dropbox, Box.com and Mozy all offer secure storage space for your files, photos and anything else stored on your computer. These companies give you varying degrees of storage space (sometimes unlimited) for a reasonable price.

If all you need is a temporary holding place for your files, I recommend you look into Box.com, Dropbox or Mozy. These companies all give you a few gigabytes of free storage space. If you would like to look into something long term, I recommend Backblaze because it offers unlimited space for a little under $5 a month.

Don’t let your physical files get damaged!

Local Backups

Local backups work great as an accessory to online backup. I am a firm believer in backing up not just my original files, but also my backups. All you need for local backups is a USB flash drive or an external hard drive. Just plug the drive into your computer, copy your files over and you’re done. You will now have an external drive with a copy of all your important work files.

The key to effective local backups is to not store your external drives in the same place as your computer during the remodeling project. If you have your external hard drive sitting on top of your computer when a big paint can lands upside down on your computer, you might just lose both the original files and the backups.

Store your external hard drives in a different room. Keep them in the basement, the room next door or stick them in a lock box at the bank if you are doing a renovation of the entire building. When you combine local backups with online backup, you have maximum protection for your office files.

Before you decide to remodel ensure your files are safe

Image via: Pinterest

Keeping Physical Files Safe

I probably don’t even need to say it but: move your physical files to a different location when you are remodeling your office. Do not assume that your files will be safe in the cabinet or with a bunch of tape on top of everything. Take the time and get every single important file out of the office.

Additionally, I also recommend that you scan your most important physical files and back those up on your computer as well. This is just good practice even if you’re not in the middle of a remodeling project. You can pick up cheap scanners at Best Buy for less than $100. Scan your files, save them to your computer and back them up. Now you have digital files, copies of digital files and the original files themselves. It would take an act of God to lose all those at once.

Wes Burns is a writing enthusiast and self-employed internet marketer. He also happens to specialize in online file storage. His latest project is located at www.OnlineFileStorage.com.

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