How to Download Your Google Data Using Google Takeout

Why Backup Google Data to Your Local System?

In this section, we will explore the reasons for downloading large files from Google Drive to your PC. While there can be many reasons, we will focus on the most prominent ones:

• Data Security: Protects against data loss due to accidental deletions, hacking, or system failures.
• Access Control: Ensures data availability even if Google services are down or inaccessible.
• Data Integrity: Maintains data accuracy and consistency over time.
• Regulatory Compliance: Helps meet legal and regulatory requirements for data retention and protection.
• Disaster Recovery: Facilitates quick data recovery in case of a disaster or data breach.
• Mobility: Allows access to data across different devices and locations, even offline.
• Organizational Continuity: Supports business continuity by safeguarding critical data.
• Employee Transition: Simplifies data retrieval when employees leave or change roles within the organization.
• Reduced Risk of Data Corruption: Minimizes the risk of data corruption by keeping multiple copies.
• Cost Efficiency: Reduces potential costs associated with data loss and recovery efforts.

Ensuring the safety and security of your Google data can be achieved through creating backups. Now, let’s explore the procedures to back up Gmail emails to an external hard drive or your local system.

Directly Download Your Google Data

You can download your data using Google Takeout, but the process is neither easy nor quick. It is quite technical and lengthy. Therefore, before exploring the Takeout method, we would like to explain a faster and more direct method to back up your Google Workspace data. The automated tool, Aryson Gmail Backup Tool, is specifically designed to back up Google Workspace data. Additionally, the tool has simple steps and very useful features. With just a few clicks, you can create a local backup of all your Google data on your system. The steps to download your Google Workspace data are as follows:

1. Install and launch the Gmail Backup Tool as an administrator.
2. Click on the Google Workspace option to back up all your Google Data.
3. Now, enter the Gmail Credentials and then click on the Sign In button.
4. Choose the Desired Icons (Email, Contact, Calendar, Drive, and Photos).
5. Select the Desired Saving Format such as PST, PDF, etc, and define the Destination Path.
6. Finally, click on the Convert button to initiate the download process of your Google Data.

Download Your Google Data Using Google Takeout

Google Takeout, developed in 2011 by the Google Data Liberation Front engineering team, is a data retrieval platform that simplifies the import and export of data from various Google services. With Google Takeout, you can export images for editing, free up space by archiving old files, and create backups to store on hard drives or other cloud services. Additionally, it allows you to download data from Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Drive, and even information related to your searches and movements on Google Maps. The process to back up Google Data using Google Takeout is lengthy. Therefore, we divided it into 4 major steps.

Step 1: Select the Data You Want to Download

• Firstly, log in to your Google Account and go to Google Takeout.
• Now, navigate and click on the option Select Data to Include to expand the section.
• Choose, the Desired Services you want to backup on your local system.
• For more details about the service click on the Service. After clicking on the service it expands and you can see options such as Multiple Formats. Customize the settings according to your needs.
• Now click on the Next button to proceed further.

Step 2: Select the Desired Delivery Method & Export Type

• Delivery Method: You can choose to receive a download link via email or add your data to a cloud storage service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
• Frequency: Choose to export your data all at once (single export) or in two-month increments over one year (resulting in six separate exports, each containing two months of data).

Step 3: Assign Maximum Archive Size

• File Type: Choose to download your data in either a zip file or a tgz file. These are compressed file formats, and most people prefer a zip file.
• File Size: Use the dropdown menu to select the maximum size for your Google archive files. Files larger than the selected size will be split into multiple parts. For example, when testing 15 services with moderate use, selecting the default 2GB file size resulted in 88 separate files to download and examine.

Step 4: Download Your Google Data

• Click the Create export button.
• The Export progress window will open.

Note: Creating your Google archive may take some time, potentially hours or even a couple of days if you’re downloading data from many services.

• To adjust the number of services selected, you can cancel the export and start over. You can also initiate a new export while the first one is being processed.
• You may receive an email from Google notifying you that an archive of your Google data has been requested and asking you to verify the request.

Note: If you did not request your data, something is wrong, and Google will cancel the request. If you did make the request, click the verification button.

• You’ll see a screen saying, You’re all set! with a link to manage your Google data archives, which takes you back to the Google Takeout page.
• When your archive is ready, you’ll receive an email notification.
• Open the email, click Download the archive, and follow the instructions to access and save the exported archive.
• You’ll need to verify your identity using your Google account password.

Conclusion

Many IT experts suggest backing up your Google data. By doing so, you can free up server space and safeguard your Google data. This article explores two efficient methods to save your Google data. The direct method using Aryson Gmail Backup Tool is faster and reliable. Additionally, you can download your Google data using Google Takeout. However, Google Takeout takes a significant amount of time to create a backup of your data.

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