Like many people, you probably have work emails, bank account information, credit card numbers, and details about your personal life stored in our Gmail inbox and other Google services. But system downtime can sometimes keep you from accessing your account.
Making backup copies of your files is a good way to get around this problem. A downloaded copy of your data also lets you access your information when you are not connected to the Internet. More importantly, if a message in Gmail or file in Google Drive were to be accidentally deleted, you would still have the backup copy to work with.
Creating an Archive
You can easily create a backup copy of the information that you store through your Google account. These backup copies are called archives. In addition to Gmail, you can also create backup copies of your Google Calendar, Contacts, Drive, Bookmarks, Hangouts, Google Play Books, and YouTube files.
Here’s how to make an archive of the data in your Google account.
- Sign into your Google account.
- Go to the Google data backup page at www.google.com/settings/takeout.
- You can now choose which Google product you want to back up. Initially, all of them will be selected, but you can deselect the ones you don’t want to include in your archive.
- After making your selection, click “Next.”
- You will now see the “Customize download format” section. On the left, you will see a drop-down menu for choosing the file type that you want your archive to be. There are three available file types: ZIP, TGZ or TBZ. ZIP is the most widely used, and is probably the best one for you.
- On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a drop-down menu for choosing the way that you want to receive the backup copy of your data: as a file in your Google Drive or through a download link sent to your email. To receive the archive through the download link, select “Send download link via email.” To receive it through Google Drive, click “Add to Drive.”
- Click “Create archive.” Google will now begin archiving your data.
Large amounts of data can take hours or even days to complete. Fortunately, Google will send you an email when your archive is ready to be downloaded.