How to backup Google Drive

For many, Google Drive is now indispensable to organise and store data, contacts, and appointments in the cloud. But what if you accidentally delete data in Google Drive or your Google account is hacked? Do you have a backup of your Google Drive backup? We explain how to create a backup of Google Drive and all the data it contains.

Google Drive makes life easier, that’s for sure. Like a PA and vault in one, the collaboration tool from Google Workspace saves your data in the cloud and syncs files automatically across local devices. With Google Drive you can access, edit, and share your stored files regardless of location or device.

Because of its high convenience, Google’s cloud service has become central for many people operating a digital office to store important data. But how secure is Google Drive? Google’s data centres are undoubtedly highly secure, and communications are encrypted. Nevertheless, hacker attacks, system crashes, or accidental deletion of documents in Drive can lead to data loss. Even corporate or university accounts on Google can be deleted at some point. So a proper backup strategy is required. Avoid using Google Drive as your only storage location. Instead create Google Drive backups on external storage media and Google Drive alternatives such as Dropbox, OneDrive, or HiDrive from IONOS.

Below we’ll show how to create a full backup of Google Drive. The principle is simple enough: create a full copy of all of your files and store them outside of Google Drive, either on an external hard drive, USB stick, and/or a cloud service.

The obvious and most popular backup method is a complete data copy to an external storage device. Storing your Google Drive backup on a local device is convenient, but its success depends on the storage space. Ideally, you should have a Google Drive backup on at least two different external hard drives or USB sticks with as much storage space as possible. This way you can update your backup effortlessly and avoid the risk of losing a local backup if the PC or laptop gets damaged.

Procedure

1. To copy Google Drive data, log in to your Google account.
2. Navigate to your Google Drive account and manually copy all the documents that you wish to save to an external drive.
3. Right-click on the selected files, select ‘Download’ and transfer the ZIP folder to the desired location.

Drive for desktop combines the sync clients Backup and Sync and Drive File Stream. The application is available for both Windows and Mac and enables automatic background synchronisation of your files with the cloud. This keeps them up to date both internally and externally, and makes editing on different devices a much smoother process. For example, even if you use Google Docs offline, your files will automatically sync with Drive content in the cloud the next time you log in to Google. However, it’s important to note that this automatic syncing also means that files you accidentally delete will automatically disappear from the cloud or local device as well.

Procedure

1. First, you need to download Drive for desktop and install it on your computer. For Windows users, the installation file is called GoogleDriveSetup.exe, and for Mac users, GoogleDrive.dmg.
2. If you agreed to a desktop shortcut before installation, you can find the installed app at the bottom right of the taskbar on Windows and at the top right on Mac.
3. You now have the option to select local files that you want to upload from your computer to the cloud. In the same way, you can download files from the cloud.
4. After this synchronisation process, the selected files now match on your computer and in the cloud. Any time you edit, move, or delete anything, it will take place in both places.
5. Besides this method of data mirroring, you also have the option to stream your files. In this case, they are stored in the cloud and only consume disk space when opened and accessed offline.

As the name implies, Google Takeout is Google’s ‘delivery/takeout’ service for files. With Google Takeout, you select Drive files that you want Google to send to you as archives to store as a backup locally or in another cloud service. You can export documents, images, and videos as archived files, and also back up bookmarks, emails, and any other saved interactions from Google services.

Procedure

1. Sign into your Google account and go to the ‘Download Data’ page.
2. Your Google data saved via Drive will be preselected.
3. If you want to export your data as a single archive to back up, go to ‘Next’ or select the desired files (e.g. all files, contacts, bookmarks and history, emails and attachments) to back up.
4. You can choose to receive a download link for your archived files via email or download the folder to store in alternative cloud services Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
5. You can also specify how often you want Google to send file archives (once as a full ZIP archive file or every two months for a year). Select the file type (ZIP or TGZ), and your preferred file size.
6. Google will send you the full data as requested.

Most of the backup options mentioned are convenient, especially for users who want to store private data. However, businesses tend to back up sensitive data regularly and at large scale. The following third-party backup software solutions will help you protect critical business data from loss. Backup software prevents data from being lost due to technical errors or malware by performing automatic backups according to schedules. Automatic backup tools are available both as free solutions and as paid licenses with a wide range of features.

Backup solutions provide centralised interfaces for complex data landscapes, enabling automatic and on-demand data protection and information management even with large capacities. Storage capacities are also suitable for large companies with growing data volumes thanks to professional, high-performance cloud environments and highly secure data centres.

The market research company Gartner regularly examines the performance of backup tools and ranks the following companies as market leaders in the area of paid backup and recovery solutions:

• Veeam: ‘Availability Suite’
• Commvault: ‘Complete Backup & Recovery’
• Cohesity: ‘DataProtect’
• Dell: ‘Data Protection Suite’
• IBM: ‘Spectrum Protect Suite’
• Veritas: ‘NetBackup’
• Rubrik: ‘Rubrik Cloud Data Management’

Smaller companies are by no means forced to resort to costly backup tools. There are plenty of free, powerful backup solutions available. Recommended are, among others:

• Paragon Backup & Recovery Community Edition
• Veeam Agent for Windows
• Aomei Backupper 6.0 Standard
• EaseUS Toto Backup Free 12.5
• Ashampoo Backup 14 Pro
• O&O AutoBackup