I just don't store anything locally that I don't mind losing. If we are talking about software development then everything is tracked in git. If I'm still part way through some changes at the end of the day I will just `git commit -am "wip"` and push to a remote branch for safe keeping. Then you can rework the commit[s] locally before opening / flagging the PR for review.
Documents and stuff are all in google docs/drive or something like that, all my dotfiles / config is in a git repo. I even work like this on my personal machine which is also used for gaming. In case of failure I can just wipe the OS drive and start fresh without any worries.