Best Way to Create Backup of Gmail Email Account to Hard Drive

Gmail email back up is becoming common practice for Gmail users because sometimes user forgets their Gmail account details and face problems to access emails. So, in that case, if the user has a backup of Gmail emails, then after configuring Gmail account with any other email client application such as Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. user can easily create a backup of Gmail account to hard drive or any other format to avoid such situations.

Take local backup of your gmail account

As we know that Gmail is the webmail service provided by Google. It’s becoming a leading mail communication platform for the people these days. Mostly 70% of the mid-size company use Gmail web service as their email services in the organization. In uncertain situations, the email account could get hacked or terminated. In order to avoid it to take a backup of Gmail, emails are the best and safest solution. It could prove handy for the users in the near future. We will discuss all the best solution to take Backup your Gmail with manually and third-party tool. It can also be handy if the user wants to switch the account to the other service.

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Methods to Backup Gmail to Hard Drive Manually

Here are some of the methods to back up the Gmail account manually:

1. Accessing Gmail Settings

In this first user must login with the Gmail id and go to the Settings menu. Then, click on “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” option under Settings. Then, select Enable POP for all mail option and click on Save Changes at the bottom. After the Email client has been configured to download the email, the user should always remember to open that email client for periodic backup.

2. Using Google Takeout

Google Takeout is one of the best solution provided by Google to create a backup of Gmail account to the hard drive. Using this method the Gmail user can select the data and items they want to download from Gmail like emails, contacts, calendars, journals etc. Here, are the following steps to make a backup of Gmail emails using Google Takeout:

  1. First, the user must log in to the Gmail Account.
  2. Second, go to https://www.google.com/settings/takeout.
  3. Third, select the data to download and click on Next button option to backup the data.
  4. Fourth, then select the file type and the delivery method and finally click on the Archive button.
  5. After that, an Email is received by the user for the same with the backed up data.

Google Takeout generally backup all items in the Gmail user wants to.

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3. Download Gmail Backup

In this method, Gmail users need to download Gmail backup which allows users to restore and backup all the contents of Gmail. It is the project which contains the source code of Gmail backup that is licensed under GNU GPL v3. Now install the Google backup using this link https://code.google.com/p/gmail-backup-com/ and then, Run the program and replace dir with the directory name and the user’s email address and password.

The requirements for the Google Backup are:

  • Download Gmail backup.exe file on the system which is having Windows operating system and .tar.gz for Linux and Mac Operating system users.

The following commands must be used to backup Gmail data using Gmail backup code:

1. For the full Gmail backup in the directory use the command:

gmail-backup.exe backup dir [email protected] password.

2. To take the backup using specified time interval Gmail users can add the date in format YYYYMMDD. In this, the second date can be removed in which the case backup is from the first date till now. The command is:

gmail-backup.exe backup dir [email protected] password 20100708 20160905

Note: The Gmail user can perform multiple backups on the same directory. The label.txt file will be updated according to the new Emails which was not backed up previously.

3. If the Gmail user wants to restore the Gmail data use the restore command. In order to restore the Gmail data from the previous directory dir use the command :

gmail-backup.exe restore dir [email protected] password

4. To clear the Gmail data the Gmail users can use clear command to delete the entire data of the Gmail account. Use the command:

gmail-backup.exe clear [email protected] password

Note: This program will continuously ask for the username and there is a chance for the user to avoid mistakes.

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Gmail Backup to Hard Drive using Third Party Tool

Gmail Backup tool is one of the best, reliable and easy method to create a backup of Gmail’s data to local drive and in multiple formats. This tool is beneficial than the manual backup methods because the complete Gmail backup couldn’t be done with the use of manual methods.

There are certain ways this software backup all the data with ease. The features provided with the software are:

  • Backup all emails, contacts and calendars
  • Multiple Gmail account access
  • Uninterrupted Backup of complete data.
  • Converts it in the required format.
  • Back up is supported by all mail clients available.

Conclusion

As we discussed why backing up the Gmail data is becoming necessary for the Gmail users these days. In addition, we discussed all the manual solutions that are available to backup Gmail data. Plus, we also recommended the tool to back up the Gmail data. Then, we discussed the use of the Gmail Backup tool which is one of the best solution available in the market. It has various features which can easily backup all the data with ease. It also has a rich UI.

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