# For those of you using GMail, how often do you backup your mailbox?



## KuJoe (Dec 29, 2014)

Like the title says, how often do you backup your GMail mailbox if at all?

I was reading a thread on WHT about somebody who had their e-mail account closed by Google for some reason and it got me thinking about the thousands of e-mails I have and what I would feel like if they disappeared one day.

Personally, I backup all of my GMail accounts nightly using Gmvault so thankfully I don't have to worry over a closed GMail account. I can only imagine how many people don't backup any of their e-mails at all.

So share your backup setup for your GMail or other e-mail accounts that are hosted by a 3rd party (if you're running your own mail server then you better be backing up your data at least nightly if it's even remotely important).


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## trewq (Dec 29, 2014)

Oh... It's never even crossed my mind because, you know, it's google.


Will set backups up tonight for my 200000+ emails...


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## D. Strout (Dec 29, 2014)

trewq said:


> Oh... It's never even crossed my mind because, you know, it's google.


Same here. Guess it's probably a good idea, so I'm running a backup now with gmvault. Hope I never have to use it.


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## eva2000 (Dec 29, 2014)

hmm got me thinking

quick google https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox


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## D. Strout (Dec 29, 2014)

eva2000 said:


> hmm got me thinking
> 
> quick google https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox


Link gives me a 404.


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## Sonic (Dec 29, 2014)

Can i backup multiple gmail account in 1 vps


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## comXyz (Dec 29, 2014)

Hmm, never thought about that before. Anyway my emails are auto forwarded to my personal mailbox.


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## mikho (Dec 30, 2014)

I would probably survive if they closed one of my accounts. Anything important comming in there is saved elsewhere depending if it's login information, invoices, market research. 


It's nice to have it there for easy search but not using it as a long time saving place.


Same goes for Google drive, files synced elsewhere for safe keeping.


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## Aurimas (Dec 30, 2014)

Never? I don't really think it's gonna crash. Unless it's the end of the world, that is.


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## KuJoe (Dec 30, 2014)

Aurimas said:


> Never? I don't really think it's gonna crash. Unless it's the end of the world, that is.


I'm not worried about it crashing, I'm worried about them closing down my account for no reason like others have experienced. You're welcome to put all of your faith and trust into Google, but remember if your e-mails disappear one day you will only have yourself to blame. 


It's happened before, it will surely happen again some day. Just hope Murphy isn't near your data when it does.



> When access was returned to some accounts they were empty. All traces of e-mails, attachments, chat logs, and contacts were gone. Some users even got the “Welcome to Gmail” message as if they were new to the service.


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## qrwteyrutiyoup (Dec 30, 2014)

Thanks for this gmvault, it looks great, and I am gonna test it soon!

I don't think I have ever backup'ed my main gmail account, and while I would survive if I suddenly lost access to it, there's a lot of valuable data there that I'd rather keep


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## drmike (Dec 30, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> Like the title says, how often do you backup your GMail mailbox if at all?
> 
> I was reading a thread on WHT about somebody who had their e-mail account closed by Google for some reason and it got me thinking about the thousands of e-mails I have and what I would feel like if they disappeared one day.
> 
> ...


I am going to give Gmvault a try.   The project could be more clear about documentation and flow, but I guess I'll figure it out.

Would be nice to be able to port data out of Gmail regularly and pipe it into some other mail system for archiving / redundancy.


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## drmike (Dec 30, 2014)

... and stupid newb question ...

Does Gmvault support ongoing backups?   Like I run it today against the motherload, then here onward run it to get the new stuff appended to backup collection?  Hoping it supports this and can script / run it all from commandline interface....  will do backup chore and put idle resources to use.


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## Steven F (Dec 30, 2014)

drmike said:


> ... and stupid newb question ...
> 
> Does Gmvault support ongoing backups?   Like I run it today against the motherload, then here onward run it to get the new stuff appended to backup collection?  Hoping it supports this and can script / run it all from commandline interface....  will do backup chore and put idle resources to use.



Different phases of a backup operation
A backup operation is organised in 4 phases:


*Initialisation phase:* During this phase, the connection to the Gmail Server, the user authentication and Gmvault-db loading happen.
*Email Backup phase:* During this phase the Gmail server will be requested and only new emails will be saved and stored on disk.
*Chat Backup phase:* This phase is similar to the previous one and will save new Gmail Talk chat messages if the chat message can be seen on IMAP.
*Cleaning phase:* During this phase, the Gmvault database will be checked and all emails and chats that have been deleted from the GMail account will be suppressed from the Gmvault-db.


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## eva2000 (Dec 30, 2014)

D. Strout said:


> Link gives me a 404.


strange worked before but seems it https://www.cloudhq.net/

i.e. https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox/synchronize/gmail

their blog always has examples of different ways to use cloudhq.net http://blog.cloudhq.net/

pricing https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox/prices and free 1yr for bloggers who write reviews of cloudhq.net 



> We also offer discounts for nonprofits, religious organizations,
> 
> charitable organizations, public schools, and students. Please contact us.
> 
> ...


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## RTGHM (Dec 30, 2014)

I delete my inbox contents about 10x more than backing it up.


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## William (Dec 30, 2014)

I don't use gmail. Don't trust US/EU.


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## raindog308 (Dec 30, 2014)

I periodically open Outlook on my desktop and let it download all the mails.  That's the extent of my backups.

I should look into gmvault - thanks.

BTW, Google administratively closing your mailbox is not the only threat.  What if Google is hacked or has some malicious internal activity?


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## Awmusic12635 (Dec 30, 2014)

I'll admit I hadn't ever thought of it until this thread. Only 152k more emails to backup using gmvault.


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## AlphaNine_Vini (Dec 30, 2014)

Yes. I guess that is a good idea when your email Inbox in floating with thousands of emails. You can clear them and keep it in a backup.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Dec 30, 2014)

trewq said:


> Oh... It's never even crossed my mind because, you know, it's google.





D. Strout said:


> Same here. Guess it's probably a good idea, so I'm running a backup now with gmvault. Hope I never have to use it.





comXyz said:


> Hmm, never thought about that before. Anyway my emails are auto forwarded to my personal mailbox.





Aurimas said:


> Never? I don't really think it's gonna crash. Unless it's the end of the world, that is.





qrwteyrutiyoup said:


> I don't think I have ever backup'ed my main gmail account, and while I would survive if I suddenly lost access to it, there's a lot of valuable data there that I'd rather keep





Awmusic12635 said:


> I'll admit I hadn't ever thought of it until this thread. Only 152k more emails to backup using gmvault.


Heh, you see replies like this quite often when it comes to larger players like Google.  It's very easy to look at all of the nifty stuff they produce that works well and just assume "Ah, it's Google, they know what they're doing", and just as easy to forget that 'Google' is just a name.  The techs they employ write the code and run the systems, and people are always fallible.  All it would take is one lazy HR rep hiring on a very incompetent coder, and suddenly you have disaster just waiting to happen.  And being a giant like Google just means the disaster will be of equally giant proportions


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## Hxxx (Dec 30, 2014)

Why would you need to backup your email? Hopefully nobody here is storing sensitive data in emails...

Thinking of it, like someone above mentioned, Outlook or Thunderbird, let it download via pop3 everything, then backup the account file somewhere else. Me personally I wouldn't do it as the possibilities are very minimum. I mean your corporate email is probably more at risk than your gmail account. Just IMO.


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## RosenHost (Dec 30, 2014)

I saw that gmail deactivation thread on WHT too. This would be my disaster. I ve got so much stored in my Gmail since it came out of Beta. Years of information and communication in there.

I am regularly importing it to a few other mail addresses such as Yandex. Can someone offer me a better way to store my gMail back up ?


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## KuJoe (Dec 30, 2014)

RosenHost said:


> I saw that gmail deactivation thread on WHT too. This would be my disaster. I ve got so much stored in my Gmail since it came out of Beta. Years of information and communication in there.
> 
> 
> I am regularly importing it to a few other mail addresses such as Yandex. Can someone offer me a better way to store my gMail back up ?


Gmvault is the fastest and easiest way I've found. Restoring e-mails is also quick and painless.


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## dave (Dec 30, 2014)

My gmail is forwarded to my main email account and deleted.  I don't like to keep any email on servers;  I keep it and back it up locally.


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## Nett (Dec 30, 2014)

Gonna have so much fun downloading thousands of emails!


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## Raymii (Dec 31, 2014)

I create a weekly backup with my own generic IMAP backup sofware: https://raymii.org/s/software/Nopriv-IMAP-backup.html - it backs up any IMAP account to both maildir and an HTML overview.

​

I do need to clean up my google apps account once in a while. 25 GB is full faster than you'd think...


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