How to Download Gmail Account Data to Hard Drive?

This article would provide you with the details on the need for the Gmail account backup and the effective ways to download Gmail account data to Hard drive.

Gmail is the webmail service provided by Google. It is a widely used mail communication platform for people these days. Google has a reliable way of storing and managing data. Even then there are chances that the users will have to face data loss due to several reasons. In order to avoid such situations, it is always a better solution to archive & downloads your Gmail account data into the external hard drive for safekeeping.

Reasons Why You Should Download Gmail Account Data to Hard Drive

There are a couple of reasons why should everybody archive their Gmail account data in an external hard drive:

1. The user accounts could get hacked, and also the user could get locked out of their Gmail account.
2. Systems may face glitches and issues with their servers (even Google’s)
3. Users can become victims of a cyber attack.
4. Even, the users may accidentally make mistakes and the files get deleted
5. For offline access to email at the time of unavailability of internet connection.

Hence it is important to keep a Gmail backup as it contains relevant emails and contacts that are used to communicate with the employees, clients, etc. To protect all the essential data, download Gmail account to hard drive. Google provides an option to download your data from Gmail, including all emails, email labels, and contacts, as an archive and so you can smoothly archive Gmail emails and other items quite easily. In case any problem occurs, you can recover it easily from the backup file.

Manual Technique to Download Gmail Account Data

• Accessing Gmail Settings
• First user must login with the Gmail ID and go to the Settings menu.
• Then, click on the “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 Gmail backup.

Using Google Takeout

Google provides an option to manage one's account data from the My Google Account page. User can use this option to download Google account data and store them at the desired location for safekeeping.

To initiate the download, either visit: www.takeout.google.com or click on “My Account” and then from Data and Personalisation section, click on Manage and

Download your data option to continue.

Follow the steps to download Gmail emails:

• Login into your Google account using Gmail id and password.
• Choose the application to download and click on Next button option to backup the data.
• Then select the file type and the delivery method and finally click on Archive button.
• Google Takeout generally does the Gmail backup that the user wants to.
• Once the archive is finished, you can download Google account data from the Manage archive option. It will take some time in downloading all the archives. Once completed, you can either copy the zip file inside the hard drive or you can first extract your zip files and then store them in an external hard drive.

Note: The archive of emails is created in a single zip which will be in MBOX format only. So, if you wish to save your emails in a format other than MBOX then you need to proceed with the automated solution and as there is no solution provided by Google for the user who wants to save their emails in PST, EML, MSG, PDF file formats.

Directly Download Gmail Account Data to Hard Drive in Multiple Formats

Even though manual methods are available to download Gmail account data to hard drive, people prefer expert solutions in cases of complicated issues for effectively performing the Gmail backup. Save Gmail emails in multiple file formats using SysTools Gmail Backup Tool. This tool will archive contacts, calendars & documents along with emails and attachments from Gmail account. Moreover, it also provides a folder filter option to download a particular Gmail folder into the drive.

Additional Features Of Automated Tool:

• Provides an option to resume interrupted backup to save time
• Supports secure backup creation of single & multiple user accounts
• Saves backed up data in most popular formats: PST, MBOX, PDF, EML, MSG, etc.
• Frees up server space using delete after download option
• Effortless user interface offered
• Avoids data loss

Steps to download data from Gmail account are as follows:

• Visit, official website to download the free version of tool for testing and launch it on your PC.
• Use your Gmail account id and password for login into the tool and proceed with the authentication process.
• Now, from the Category section, select the data you wish to download from Gmail account.
• Next from the email-format section, select the format in which you want to convert emails.
• Browse the location of the hard drive to download Gmail account data and click Ok.
• Finally, use “Apply Filter” option for selective folder download and then click on the Start button.
• Now, the tool will initiate the download process. No need to wait for the archive creation as in the Google Takeout method. Here, the tool will preview the download progress, and once complete you create a pop-up about download completion. Moreover, after completing the download the tool will generate an export report contains the success and failure count of downloaded items.

Conclusion

Gmail is one of the widely used email applications all over the world. And so it is important to take safety measures to protect the data stored in Gmail. The above section describes the need for Gmail backup, both manual and automated solutions to download Gmail account data to hard drive. The Gmail Backup tool has many incredible features and would efficiently do Gmail backup.