[Simplest] | How to Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive
Want to know how to backup Gmail emails to external hard drive? In this ultimate guide, we will show you 2 easy and reliable solutions to handle it. One is to use Google Takeout, and the other is to use a superb third-party service, MultCloud.
May 11, 2023 | 3 minutes read
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User Case: Best Way to Download and Back up Gmail?
“What’s the best way to download and back up my Gmail? I've tried MailStore, Thunderbird and some others and they were ok, but not great. And from what I remember they don't download attachments. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!” – A Post from Reddit
Why Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive?
Gmail is a robust and smart email service that offers many convenient features. With 15GB of free storage space, users can store a large number of emails without worrying about running out of space. When users want to search a specific email, they can utilize the powerful search functionality keyword, sender, recipient, date, and more.
Many users worldwide utilize Gmail to start a business and get contact with their clients. It is integrated with other Google products, including Google Drive and Google Calendar, making it easy to share files and schedule meetings. So, it is not hard to think of emails on Gmail are important. To ensure data security and reduce potential expenditure, users can backup Gmail to hard drive.
In this article, we will show you how to make Gmail backup emails to hard drive in 2 reliable solutions. After reading, you can choose the one that suits you most.
How to Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive [Normal]
Google Takeout is a smart service that helps users to export data from all Google products, such as Google Drive, Google Photos, Mail, YouTube, etc. So, when you are wondering “how to backup my Google email to a local drive external”, you can take advantage of this free service. And now, you can follow the Google Takeout instructions to backup emails from Gmail:
Step 1: Head to your Google Takeout on the web. Then hit the Deselect All button on the right upper corner.
Step 2: Swipe down your cursor and tick Mail. Then scroll down to hit the Next Step button.
Step 3: Now, select the file type, frequency, and destination based on what you need. Finally, hit the Create export button.
Step 4: It may take some time to create the archive, which is depending on your file size. When archive is made, you will receive an email with a downloading link. You can download the data through the link.
Step 5: Connect your external hard drive to your computer, and then move what you have downloaded to it.
Note: Although Google Takeout is useful, it has many limitations:
- It only allows you to export a limited range of data, such as emails from a specific time period. That’s to say, you may need to create multiple exports.
- If you have many emails to export, the resulting file size can be quite large, which makes it hard to download and store.
- And there is a limit to the number of times you can try to download the archive. If the download is unsuccessful after 5-6 attempts, the download link will expire and you will need to generate a new one.
How to Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive [Novel]
To avoid limitations you might encounter, you can turn to a useful and convenient third-party service, MultCloud, to backup emails from Gmail to hard drive easily and quickly. MultCloud is a web-based cloud storage management service that offers users the ability to manage different cloud drives and email boxes together.
Tip: The ability to export emails from Gamil via MultCloud will be released at the end of May. Please wait patiently.
This service is famous for its transferring feature between cloud drives, including Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox Business, OneDrive for Business, Flickr, MEGA, Google Workspace, iCloud Photos, and more. In addition, it will support mailboxes such as Gmail, Outlook, etc. soon.
When it does support, you can then download multiple emails from Gmail to your PC via MultCloud easily and seamlessly, since:
- Multi-Download Emails at Once. MultCloud allows you to download multiple emails from Gmail to PDF format at once, which saves time and improve efficiency.
- Automatic Downloads. To protect data from missing, it is recommended to download important emails to PDF files locally. In order to ease the process, you can make automatic downloads at a designated time, daily, weekly, and monthly.
Then, follow the instructions below to learn how to backup Gmail emails to hard drive via MultCloud:
Step 1: Sign up an account on MultCloud for free.
Step 2: Navigate to Add Email on the left. Then add Gmail by hitting its icon.
Step 3: Go to Gmail, select the email you want to backup, and hit the Download button. Then it will be saved as a PDF file on your PC.
Step 4: Now, connect the external hard drive to your PC. And move the downloaded email to your hard drive by dragging and dropping.
Tip: If you want to backup Gmail emails to hard drive on Mac, you can also utilize 2 ways above.
Final Words
After reading this article, you now know 2 simple and easy methods to backup emails from Gmail to hard drive on Windows 10, Windows 11, and Mac. Anyway, if you don’t mind the manual process, you can utilize Google Takeout. If not, you can turn to MultCloud. This service can also help you export Gmail emails to PDF.
