How to Back up All Your Google Data
Chances are, you’ll live happily ever after with your Google account until Jeeves is raised from the dead to reaffirm his dominance in the search market (in other words, forever). However, I ran into a few weird cases lately where Google deleted user accounts for no rhyme or reason, resulting in them being unable to access what they had stored on Google services (a lot) and having no real resources to return it.
Solution? Well, there is nothing I can do to help you get back to the account that Google has disabled; I miss the magic wand that somehow works in Mountain View. However, if you regularly back up all the data you store on Google services, the pain won’t be that big if or when Google cancels you.
How to back up your Gmail
It’s simple: just download your favorite email client and connect it to Gmail (using IMAP , not POP3). Once you’ve downloaded your email, your desktop client will always have the option to back up or export everything in your various folders. Do this and you will be doubly safe; you will have all your email on your desktop or laptop, and you will have a backup archive that you can re-import into any email client you need in case something ever goes wrong.
The only thing you need to remember is to download the desktop app from time to time and sync your Gmail account. Both Windows and Mac have very useful tools for scheduling application launches, so you can set up a routine that launches your mail application, say every day at noon. It should sync your email automatically and you should be fine. However, at least even starting your mail client manually (inconsistently) means that you will always have a backup of a good portion of your old and super-old emails.
How to back up your Google Drive
To do this, I simply refer to the appropriately named Google Backup and Sync app. When you install it, it dumps the folder to your desktop or laptop and copies everything to your Google Drive straight down. Any changes you make to a folder on your desktop are synced to the cloud and vice versa.
The only downside to this plan is that the Google “documents” that are created in your synced folder – your documents, sheets, slides, forms, etc. – are actually saved as hyperlinks on your system, not local documents. To back them up, you need to go to your Google Drive on the web, select them (which you can do in bulk ), right-click and select Download.
How to back up your Google Photos
It’s complicated. Google Backup and Sync only works with files in your Google Drive, not Google Photos. There is no handy app that you can use to sync everything you uploaded there. Instead, it’s best to useGoogle Takeout to dump all of your photos and movies – it’s also a convenient way to back up all the data you store on Google if you don’t want to take a siled approach.
Trick? Google Takeout will back up everything on every launch. This way, every time you run a backup, you have a hefty download, consisting of mostly the same stuff. On the other hand, you can set Google to automatically create and email you a link to this giant archive every two months (for a year until you have to set up recurrence again), so what?
Otherwise, if you know you only ever upload new photos and movies to Google Photos, you can run Google Takeout once to get a full backup of everything you have, then just search for the current year – “2021” – to Google Photos at regular intervals, select whatever it finds and upload manually. It’s more work and you’ll have to think about it, but it will save you several gigabytes in data transfer costs.
How to back up your apps, games, movies to Google Play, etc.
You can not. Sorry, I don’t know how to access items purchased on Google Play if your account gets deleted (or deleted) by Google. While it is possible that you can still use these apps and games on your Android, you will be stuck with the version that existed before deleting your account. You will not be able to update them without an account to access the Google Play store. Likewise, you won’t be able to access your purchased movies, music or TV shows because your account no longer exists. (You can try downloading them for offline viewing , but it will be a pretty fun process if you do it for everything you purchased; even if it works after deleting your account, you will only be able to watch said content on that device.)
Basically, if you’ve bought a lot of things on Google Play and don’t want to lose access to them, don’t make Google angry. Don’t do anything with your Google accounts that would otherwise cause Google to “hmm” when it hovers its mighty hand over the Delete key for your account.
How to back up your Chrome bookmarks
To be honest, I’m not sure what will happen to your Chrome bookmarks if you sync them through Google and the company kills your account. I would assume they would still exist in your browser – the sync source – but just in case it never hurts to visit your bookmark manager ( chrome: // bookmarks / in the address bar). Click the three dots icon in the upper right corner and select “Export Bookmarks” to do this.
How to back up your Google contacts
If you use Google to manage your contacts, remember to save them somewhere else from time to time. I suspect they will disappear from your connected devices if you ever lose access to your account; even if I’m wrong, a little backup won’t hurt anyone. Visit Google Contacts and click “Export Contacts” in the left sidebar to download all your contacts as a handy .CSV or vCard file.
How to back up Google Authenticator 2FA codes
Honestly, if you’re worried about losing access to your Google account at all, then you could diversify your services as well. Switch from Google Authenticator to another app and whatever happens to your Google account won’t affect your precious 2FA codes – you know, the very things you use to log into any other account.
The same is true for your saved Google passwords. If you use Google Password Manager to save all your website logins, consider switching to a different (free) service . Exporting passwords is as easy as importing them elsewhere. I have nothing against Google tools, but if you put all your eggs in one basket and lose access to that basket, well, you’re kind of screwed up.