Do you mix personal data and freelance work files in same computer?

November 21, 2019 10:59 PM

Rather a weird question towards freelancers... I recently got a new heavyweight desktop for doing freelance work at home. Though I already have a middleweight one that I worked, and still, play games, and watch videos on in my bedroom. Originally, I want to separate personal and work but then don't feel like to have both computers on switching myself around, or even get distracted by one another so keeping only one was the solution. However, I need to bring my work computer to work from time to time so it's not a good idea to have my personal files, games, and videos in it either. Ended up, I have two desktops and both are on the whole time.... I would like to know how you guys do.

Ideally, I would like to have the "home/entertainment" computer still available for me to access all my personal files but like a TV, easy to switch on/off. Perhaps a tablet? If you do mix personal data and freelance work files in the same computer, how do you separate and juggle between? Set up different accounts and folders?

posted by lanhan to Technology (14 answers total)

I just have a strict folder hierarchy on my tower.

In the main what I do for a living and what I do for fun are the same thing, just that people pay me for the living part. So probably not a typical user.

I don't have anything problematic on my machine that would be a problem with clients and with the hierarchy they only see the inside of the jobs folder, and sometimes the photo library.

I have a portable machine for presentations but it's a chromebook and I have a very stripped back version of my files there.
posted by unearthed at 12:45 AM on November 22, 2019

Two different user accounts on the same physical machine?
posted by rd45 at 1:06 AM on November 22, 2019

How about network attached storage? Grab a portable hard drive (and maybe an adapter if you need it) and hook it up to your router. All your personal files live there and you can just wifi them to your work computer and/or new ipad or whatever.
posted by sexyrobot at 1:18 AM on November 22, 2019

I maintain a strict hierarchy unless on long term engagements where it is more appropriate they provide me with a work machine.

If I get a “work machine” for a longer engagement, I also put it on a different WiFi channel/network than the family uses.
posted by tilde at 3:19 AM on November 22, 2019

I need to bring my work computer to work from time to time
So this is not a desktop? Or are you literally dragging a tower in?

If it's a laptop, the best answer is probably to have the personal stuff on a NAS or hot-swappable storage solution of some sort. Faster drives and USB3 mean a decrease in meaningful differences between external and internal drive speeds, so a dock with hot-swappable drive bays and a nice monitor is a decent option.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:04 AM on November 22, 2019

I just put everything work-related in a folder with a very structured heirarchy -- My Company > Year > Client Name and then Project Name > Month if required.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:10 AM on November 22, 2019

Ideally, I would like to have the "home/entertainment" computer still available for me to access all my personal files but like a TV, easy to switch on/off.

Hibernating whichever machine you're not actively working with will make for faster shutdown/startup cycles than full shutdown and bootup, saves the same amount of electricity, and doesn't force you to save and re-open everything every time you do it.

I have two desktops and both are on the whole time.... I would like to know how you guys do

Having a computer that runs all the time at home is a nice thing. It lets you do stuff like extended torrent downloads and video conversions and whatnot in the background, and serve files and/or media to your LAN, and collect pretty satellite pictures from the weather service to turn into timelapse movies, and be an always-on personal VPN endpoint for when you're out and about, and lots of other good stuff... but using a standard desktop machine for that burns quite expensive amounts of juice.

I have a few Raspberry Pi boards and some similarly tiny machines from other manufacturers scattered about my LAN doing various useful things. Each of them typically eats around 5 watts. The one with the vast USB3 hard disk vault attached to it is a bit hungrier, but still nowhere near as much as a desktop box.
posted by flabdablet at 7:14 AM on November 22, 2019

I recently got a quite small touchscreen laptop (more of a "notebook," truly) for a similar purpose. It's primarily my work machine, but at home, it serves as a sort of secondary/portable entertainment platform. Naturally, I often multitask in work/personal mode as a result.

I personally wouldn't go the separate-logins approach just because installing software can then become a pain, not to mention the extra time it would take to switch from work mode to personal mode. (OTOH, if I had trouble getting too distracted, I might.)

What IS essential to my setup is (1) Dropbox AND (2) the Google Drive syncing program, which is now called "Backup and Sync" AND (3) a couple of batch files I wrote to ease and expedite copying work files (that for whatever reason don't go into 1 or 2) to and from a USB drive. The command to research, I discovered, is the glorious xcopy (this requires much less DOS knowledge than it might seem).

Ideally, I would like to have the "home/entertainment" computer still available for me to access all my personal files

This is what Dropbox is for on mine. I suppose the primary determining factor for that type of setup is the size of those files.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:26 AM on November 22, 2019

I'm not monied enough to have two computers. I use the same computer for both personal and work, but I keep the files strictly separate in different folders.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:47 AM on November 22, 2019

The command to research, I discovered, is the glorious xcopy

XCOPY is good enough for lots of things, but if you hit its annoying limitations (of which it has several - it's DOS-era legacy code) the modern replacement is ROBOCOPY.

to and from a USB drive

You can make a small, robust, lightweight, capacious, performant, reliable USB drive for not much money using one of these cheap USB3 enclosures and a M.2 SATA SSD. If your machine has a spinny disk inside, this will easily outperform it.
posted by flabdablet at 7:58 AM on November 22, 2019

I keep all my personal & work files on a NAS server at home, they just get synced around from machines as I need them.

I keep two user accounts on all the machines I use for work, one for me personally and one for work. Mostly just to keep things neat and tidy (and uh, no embarrassing browser history) for when I'm around clients.

I do have a laptop that goes with me to client locations, and occasionally I rent it out to other contractors, so that one is solely work stuff. But I wouldn't bother with that if other people weren't also using it and I wouldn't have gotten a "work only" machine if it weren't also generating income for me.
posted by bradbane at 8:14 AM on November 22, 2019

I've been a freelancer for a long time, but it's never occurred to me to separate my work and personal files between machines. Then again, I've always worked from home. I do have an elaborate directory hierarchy.

If I were going into an office and needed to maintain this kind of wall, I might consider setting up a special-purpose login on my (one) computer for work. With an encrypted drive, I think that would provide sufficient security.
posted by adamrice at 8:58 AM on November 22, 2019

I’ve always used two separate computers. On the work one, different encrypted disk volumes or usb drives per client, so that only one is open at a time and it is hard to drag the wrong file to the wrong folder. Also antivirus and fun blockers on the work pc. I’ve alternated between having the “good” computer be for me or for clients. Usually based on the length of a gig.
posted by unknown knowns at 1:37 PM on November 22, 2019

I was lucky enough to have scholarships that paid for two computers. I learned to strictly separate work and personal files after a series of mistaken keystrokes opened a full-screen naked photograph of myself in a very public and professional setting (think, government research institute). I don't know if anyone saw, but to this day I feel a little more self-conscious when I'm there.

You may not have to worry about this happening. If you do in any capacity at all, learn from my shame and error and strictly separate the personal from the private.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:12 AM on November 23, 2019