Poltroon

Hi - Total rookie, so forgive my ignorance. I recently bought my laptop from my old employers. I wanted to share files between my home PC and the laptop. I made a (near) fatal error and swtiched my laptop from domain to workgroup, rendering all my files inaccessible. After eating enough humble pie to sate my old network administrator's appetite, I hooked back onto the domain via VPN and recovered access to my files. It got me thinking....how do I safely migrate my folders off the old work domain and onto my home network? Any advice gratefully received. Thanks.