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Google Has All My Data – How Do I Back It Up?
shadeshope writes "Slowly but surely Google has taken over my computing life. How can I back it up?
Bit by bit with their mantra, hip image and brilliant services, Google has gained my trust and all my data. I am doing almost all of my computing in the cloud. Google Reader, Calender, Email, Docs and Notes have become my tools of choice; even to the point where my day book, research notes, etc., are all on Google's servers. It was just so easy, enabling me to effortlessly work from multiple computers, operating systems and locations. I know, I know, this is foolish — all my eggs are firmly in one basket. It has crept up on me. As a long-time computer user and committed pessimist, I have used many schemes over the years to ensure my data is safe. Now I have ceded all control to Google. How can I regain some control and back this all up? Is there a one-touch solution that will take all my data from the various online apps and archive it on my home server?"
Then the gov't will back it all up for you! Easy.
Haida Manga
Once you get all your data back, buy a Mac, subscribe to MobileMe and be safe, knowing that all your data is in the safe hands of a single compa...
Oh wait.
I guess you could rely on third-party apps that sync it locally...
Gbackup, of course! Well OK, not yer, but apparently coming soon. If you need it now, um, Google is your friend. And there's more, if you check Google.
And BTW, web apps != "the cloud".
Caveat Utilitor
Nope!
>>Bit by bit with their mantra, hip image and brilliant services.
There's a sucker born every minute.
google's redundancy is legendary. why bother?
i can see if they maybe canceled a service or somesuch, but that's highly unlikely, especially for their more popular stuff. (spreadsheets, email, pictures)
i can understand the urge to keep it all local, but with their diversity, it's much more safe in their "cloud" than it would be at my house...
I don't know ... Google it
But Google solutions tend to at least support established open standards.
That is: You can archive your Gmail account via IMAP. You can probably download your Google Calendar appointments as an iCal file. While I'm not sure of the best way to automate it, all of your documents in Google Docs are available in OpenDocument.
Still, these are all "some assembly required".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Thunderbird can back up gmail, and the Zindus extension will back up you address book. Lifehacker had a story in the past month about using wget to backup your del.icio.us bookmarks; I presume it can be adapted to Googlepages and your blog. Finally, if you install Google Gears, a lot of content will be cached on your laptop. I don't know how you'd retrieve it, but at least you'd know where it was.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
..fucked. Seriously. You have been indexed, Sir.
[1] Just confese to your wife, I'm sure whe'll understand. Worst case she makes you see a shrink.
It's Calendar, not Calender.
File -> "Save As..."
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Google has their own backups I am sure. So the only way your data would be lost is if the entire Google company goes under. And would you really want to live in a world without Google?
Use the Google services only where necessary. We've been doing this for a company I've started, but we only put documents and information on Google's services while we need it there. Not only is all our data on our backup server, but we only put data on their servers while it's needed. Visiting customer sites, etc.
In addition, isn't this the kind of thing that makes laptops so great? Bring it with you! There are tons of sharing apps about for various uses. Use a VPN and sshfs for remote file access. Use iCal/whatever to sync with your google calendar. That sort of thing.
In short, slowly migrate to a safer solution you're in more control of. You may lose a bit of your convenience, but safe data is worth it, in my opinion.
First step would be to not give Google all your data. I have no problem with the company (as yet), but I understand that all they are is a for-profit company. If Google has all your data to the point you need to make this post, I think you may have other more pressing things to worry about... like the fact that it may no longer really be your data any more.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
What part of Sarbanes-Oxley requires they backup data that has nothing to do with their finances? I think you don't know what you're talking about. SOx is very much misinterpreted, and you're only continuing the trend.
As a long-time computer user, and committed pessimist, I'd have hoped you'd think about backups long before you placed all your trust in the cloud.
... once enough people become dependent on the cloud, they will announce it will become a paid service the following week.
... like the body or the subject!) Erm, you mean you can't detect which it is ???
This is exactly the model that all clouds will eventually mutate into
Your eggs, Google's basket.
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment
Does This 'Ask Slashdot' have the air of a troll to anyone else? It's like the questioner is serving it up so that every Google-hating/privacy-loving/I-told-you-so'er can go *apeshit* on it.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
The only data S-O requires Google to back up is their own financial data. They have no legal obligation whatsoever to the users of their free services. They could delete all of the OP's data right now for any reason or none and he would have no recourse.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The real problem is that you allowed this to happen in the first place. Get your data back, and don't let anyone have it again. It's bad enough that more or less any government agency likely has access to ALL your data right now, that any talented hacker likely can GET access to it, and that Google could be SELLING your very personal data to the highest bidder. Put in on a secure USB flash drive or something.
Yes, cloud computing. Web apps. Kids are such a trusting lot, but that'll change soon.
Really, you can believe me, can't you? :)
When google's servers go down, in first order, you'll be looking for an atomic shelter. Data backup - somewhere down the road.
Use Outlook and connect to GMAIL through IMAP, then save off your email to a .PST file via the Import/Export tool.
-M
Use Acrobat to crawl your Google content. If you need to extract from that, there are several options. But hey - part of buying into the Google cloud is letting them worry about backups. I'm fairly sure they are much more concerned and adept than you will ever be :)
Has anyone ever tried calling them? I've never dealt with Google's customer service, but they may be helpful. If nothing else, you'll get a good idea about their policies reguarding customer data and what they allow said customers to do with it.
Zerg = 1a2a3a4a5sh6sh7sh8sh9sh0sf
You are wise, grasshopper. Wise and perceptive.
I remember not so many years ago people would say here that they would never ever trust their data with an online storage company. Far too dangerous: they can read your data, what if they go bankrupt or something goes wrong and you loose your subscription, etc etc. Now suddenly people don't make local backups anymore. I wonder whose RDF is larger: Google's or Steve's?
-- Cheers!
Conduit (http://www.conduit-project.org/) is aiming to be what you what. Currently it supports some two-way syncing between Google contacts and GCal. It only has one-way to GDocs so far. Lifehacker reviews it here: http://lifehacker.com/398775/sync-and-back-up-your-data-with-conduit-for-linux
Seriously, what should happen to google? If you think google will lose your data soon, bet on that on your local stock market. You'll be so rich when that happens that you wouldnt care anymore.
Is there a one-touch solution that will take all my data from the various online apps and archive it on my home server?"
no.
I use http://www.gmail-backup.com/ to backup my gmail accounts. It works with regular gmail and google apps gmail. It has a click and backup view, but I use the cmd line interface to automate a daily backup of all my mail and labels to a folder as .eml files. It also lets you restore to gmail if needed. It has a few quirks, but over all is very useful.
Sig!
One thing you can at least back up for sure is all your emails from gmail, since you can download it all through POP3. I don't know about the other services.
It worked for the Bastard...
If your employer has a bunch of gigabit ethernet lying around, use that. Just get the files stored on the network so they're shooting around the lines, then pull them off as needed. It's gotta work.
-Hammer
If I delete something at work, and then six months later think 'whatever happened to that file?', there's a chance it'll be on our backup archive and I can get it back. Or I can roll back to any of the last week's daily backups. Can Google do that? Has anyone tried? Does it keep versions?
They seem to encourage you to not delete anything, but that doesn't help with undoing several revisions of a document, does it?
I'm not a big google docs user, so I might have missed this somewhere.
This reads like some pathetic love novel reduced to "I hate you google, why are you so great, you know I can never say no to you". If you do not care about your information (work or private) and never plan to work on anything of consequence then sure go ahead, share your info with some company (with potential future use by other companies or governments). And if this is simply some google marketing stunt to fill the web with "I hate google because they are so awesome" then go away, this does not belong on /. Please, stop with all the free google advertising, give me something of substance or novel to waste my time on.
First, Google did not 'take over' your life or your data. You willingly gave it to them and, now that you find yourself a bit worried about the implications of one company having all of your data, you are trying to paint them as some sort of evil entity that cajoled and nearly forced you to turn over your data to them.
They didn't.
Take responsibility for your decision to hand over your data. Just because a service or company is cool and sexy doesn't give them any special powers to make you do anything. Google included.
Now, as to backing up your data, I'm not sure what the problem is. Google isn't holding your data hostage at all. With the exception of maybe Notes, you can get your data from Google to your local machine pretty easy:
Email: setup a POP3 client and download all your mail to your machine from GMail.
Documents: Go to FILE->DOWNLOAD AS and export each document to a file on your hard disk.
Reader: Spend some time looking at each feeds URL and bring them into a desktop feed reader.
Calendar: Find a tool (and there are some, I just can't think of the name now) that will allow you to bring Google Calendar data off of the server and into a local app.
The truth is you are not a slave to Google. You can leave anytime you want. That doesn't mean it's not going to take a little work on your end to do so but, then, why shouldn't it? YOU chose to go 100% with Google (as many of us have including me) and it isn't Googles responsibility to make it super simple for you to up and leave.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Sounds like a sound business opportunity to me. You have your data hosted, but kinda sorta don't really trust the host service. Hire a hacker service that hacks your host service, and backs up your data, without the host service knowing. That way, if you and your host service get in a huff, you still have your data from your hacker service.
But IBM has probably patented this already.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Except maybe people with stock options from the google company?
I wonder precisely what promises Google has made and what responsibilities have they disclaimed themselves of? As any business school graduate knows, one of the keys to keeping customers is to make it easy to start with them but tough to leave.
Does Google owe any level of data integrity and privacy? Do they owe return of user data without claiming rights to use it otherwise? Do they make any promise of data protection and disaster recovery? What due diligence does the use owe in the process?
As we move to an environment where more and more people simply 'trust" corporations to hold and protect their (potentially personal) data, I fear that we're way ahead of the law in defining the rights and responsibilities of both users and providers. In the absence of law, providers, such as Google, will write naturally terms of use that mostly benefit themselves. Users will simply lose.
I'm personally excepting to Conduit to fulfill my needs in backing up from different sites. Of course synchronizing is different from backing up, but when I have all the data on my local machine I can backup those easily.
I'm not very keen in using Google or any other services for my calendar, contacts, photos etc. data. If I'll think I'll need on-the-fly syncing, I'll rather just setup a sync server on my home server.
This sounds worryingly like me!
But anyway, as far as I'm aware, many if not all of Google's services let you export all the data. For example, Reader lets you export the list of feeds you're subscribed to. Notebook lets you export each notebook.
It's all a bit tedious though, but it wouldn't be too hard to code something to do it all for you. I don't think anyone's done one yet, but if you have a look round sourceforge you might find something interesting.
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
So which section in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act explicitly requires data backups?
Don't trust anybody with your data. ImO you were stupid to do so in the first place.
...is an ongoing project to provide exactly this sort of functionality; no deliverables yet though
soon, google will finally be recognized as the evil empire it is
When will goo$le bashing overtake M$ bashing ?
my bet, August 12, 2010
anybody else wanna get in on the betting pool ?
Not right now you don't!
OK, don't go there. It's just some lousy advertising site. It's just that if it weren't taken, I might have used this domain to run the hypothetical service I've been talking about for months now: backdown, as opposed to backup. It would be just what you're talking about--something that takes all this web app crap and pulls it back down to your local box. Ideally, you should be able to change services. I began to think of this when I realized I was accumulating a lot of metadata for my photos in Flickr. I began to think, it would be nice if I could preserve all of that locally, or even store it in a service-independant format so that I could change services. Imagine, you have a standard XML format for photo metadata, and you can translate your Flickr metadata into that, and then upload it into whatever service or application comes along later.
Technicly, we know it can be done. The real problem seems to be some of the legal crap that could happen to you as a result of agreeing to the TOS. I'm not sure about Flickr, but the LinkedIn TOS is evil in this regard. They specificly say you can't have a LinkedIn account if you are competing with LinkedIn, and the development of such a service could easily be placed in that category.
So. I haven't put any effort into it. It's just another idea for the halfbakery.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
google can even do it for you:
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html
Documents - Use "offline access for Google Docs"
Contacts - export to CSV or vCard
calendar - export it as a private address in ical format (also XML, html)
blogs - HTTracker
photos - try picasa
what else?
already to 111 posts and non one has says:
all your data are belong to google /. I am disappointed.
When all else fails, try.
Google Docs Offline If the 'cloud' explodes, I guess you can open your Docs offline folder with a web browser, and save the documents as OO, HTML, etc. Other folks have posted about using IMAP to get your email, etc.
Who's the idiot.
You just got troll'd!
Gmail supports IMAP, syncronize it with thunderbird and you are set.
Calander can be synronized with GCaldaemon to sunbird and saved there.
Gdocs can export everything as pdf or doc. Yay.
Picasa albumns, well you uploaded it in the first place I hope you still have your own copy.
Reader, just get another RSS program and copy the links. You dont need to back anything up (i hope) and how many feeds do you really follow?
Its not that hard...
The big difference between a cloud and a mainframe is that the cloud itself runs on 'micro-computers' - so the old problem of the micro-computers obeying Moore's law and out-running the mainframe is obsolete. Anyway, cloud computing is the latest greatest thing, and you can expect many forwards of 'the website is down' until you agree:-).
Now how do I get the prosecutor to return those backups to me?
fencepost
just a little off
On GMailFS!
I think it was Linus who once said to the effect, "only wimps backup. Others post everything on the web and let it be mirrored by every other site." Oh, you mean personal data...
I'm sure Google provides an online backup service of some sort. Use that and you'll be fine.
You get what you pay for... suckas!
I thought that, all Sarbanes-Oxley states is, that Apple has to charge their customers for their updates for selected products. I believe it must mention Apple explicitely, since other companies don't charge for their updates.
Georg
Mail and Calendar, you can simply back up by subscribing to them using IMAP/POP and iCal.
Google Sites, you can kind of backup with wget; just make a copy of the site from a cron job.
For Google Docs, you can use Gears; it won't be a full backup, but it will have local copies of the most important documents, and you can cut-and-paste out of that in a pinch.
In the long term, something like Gnome Conduit will probably solve this problem once and for all; until then, one just has to muddle through.
What do we do?
Googles applications and services (thus far) are still completely within my 'non evil' threshold, they are useful, convienient, fast, cross platform etc etc.
Google docs has an incredibly important spreadsheet in there, which I can manually backup but interestingly I would also like to add a password to it (beyond the pass required for my google account) I wish they'd add that feature too, because if anyone ever reads that spreadsheet with malicious intent, I'm @$%#ed!
Anyone got any ideas on how to back this stuff up?
I find that things like Picassa are OK because these are only copies of your digital stuff at home. But even then, your comments, captions and arrangements would, it seems belong to them.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
If google has all your data, (a) you're an idiot for not keeping it backed up already and (b) start copying it locally, any way you can.
If you don't have a local copy of your data, you're just asking for trouble. Either that, or it's not important enough to bother with if it goes away.
retarded cunt
If it's on the web you can archive it.
It's not the easiest way to do it, but with the increased difficulty rating even if your execution is less than perfect you could get a good score
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
Set up another email account strictly for archiving (your home server, a different gmail account, or another offering like yahoo).
Have google foward a copy of all this mail to your backup account.
Really, though, I doubt you have much to worry about. Why would google up and delete your account? Typical operations would just disable the account, and leave it lying around for a while just in case.
If you delete mail on google, it doesn't even really get deleted. It gets stored in your trash folder. From there you'd have to delete it a second time to really tell them to forget it.
Chances are google has much more reliability and availability than your home server could ever provide. So just make a "memory" account like I did, and forward at least the important stuff their.
I have the same issue with facebook. Despite my discouragement, my friends insist on sending me messages on facebook. I'd rather not cancel my account, but at the same time, i'm getting increasingly nervous about all that data out of my reach. I wrote a crawler a few years ago, but facebook has started kicking people off for that behavior. I just recently wrote them a note asking for help backing up my data. We shall see what they say. I consider the ability to locally mirror all my cloud data to be requirement.
Though they might now be the same, the internet can go down before google does.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
Conversely, I use Google docs to backup all my papers I leave on my usb thumb drive.
Back up, sonny. Undo what you've done. Keeping all the data that's important to you with one provider, while probably convenient now, will probably cause you problems later on. Microformats are an answer.
Knowledge is valuable. Ignorance is dangerous. Censorship is unacceptable. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10
As long as you give in and allow yourself to give other people your stuff you are in trouble. So you must start to slowly put all future data on your own hard disks and disk's.and each day slowly pull the data out and change it if, and when you can!if you don't there was no reason to have brought this subject up...
How much are you willing to spend on a "one touch" solution? Maybe we can work something out.
I suggest you buy your self a old PC then hope over to The How To Forge and follow the install 'The Perfect Setup' (Ubuntu server with PHP, MySQL, Web Mail (Round Cube is nice!) and then set up a web site and install 'Feed on Feeds', 'Online Bookmarks', plus any other server side app's that you can find/want and use SSL. Use FTP to upload any documents made locally, thus making them accessable where ever you go. Then back server as you like. Now where's my foil hat?..
if you can't find it on google, it can't be important. Just lay back and let google decide what's important and what's not.
There is 'gmailfs' which allows you to mount your Gmail share as a local directory. It is apparently not fully secure as it stores your password as text on your system, but well...
I know that it is available for Linux systems, though I have never been able to fully get it to work.
Here is theLinux link.
Here is a link to a Windows Port.
It's not a "one-touch" solution, but what is? I has the potential to be a great deal more than just your average backup.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
It seems that that project is pretty dead and it doesn't even work with Leopard.
I don't actually use the google stuff all that much... but I set up gmail to forward all mail to my home account.
Also I have goosync publish all my calendar and contact data from my palm onto the site. I guess I could use it to go the other way as well.
Don't know what to do about google docs, other than to export everything to local files. I really haven't used it, though the collaboration features seem interesting.
Google has a specific policy of not trapping users' data, so you can back up almost any data you have at Google. Here are some helpful links:
How to back up almost any Google service:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/creating-backup-for-your-google-account.html
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/not-trapping-users-data-good/
Backup a Blogger blog:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-to-backup-blogger-blog.html
Backup Google bookmarks:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/06/export-your-google-bookmarks.html
Backup your Gmail with getmail:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-getmail/
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/terms.html
You agree to comply with your company's data usage and privacy policies.
So in other words, don't put important company information on their servers without permission. In other words, that end run you are doing around your companies security policies is a violation.
You agree that Google has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any Content and other communications maintained or transmitted by Google services.
No backups, no liability for lack of backups.
Upon the termination of your use of Google services, including upon receipt of a certificate or other legal document confirming your death, Google will close your account and you will no longer be able to retrieve content contained in that account.
Better get your stuff off of their servers if you decide to quit the service.
You agree that Google may at any time and for any reason, including a period of account inactivity, terminate your access to Google services, terminate the Terms, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to Google services, your account or any files or other content contained in your account.
If google terminates your account, you may not be able to retrieve your data.
Then there are the clauses re: we are not liable for anything.
This just reinforces my uneasiness with using these services. You can lose control of very important information with no recourse or ability to retrieve those data. I have raised these objections only to be told "dude, you don't get the cloud, its 733t!"
Just stop and think before you send out information into a "cloud" or even to remotely hosted servers. Think about the worst case secenarios and what their impact would be.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You could use CALGOO (Java so can be made to work on a lot of different platforms) to synchronize your calendar data between Google's Calendar and the dekstop version of CALGOO on your (main) desk- and/or laptops. Giving you access to your calendar if you are on the road and have no internet access available as an added benefit. http://www.calgoo.com/ regards from Leeuwarden Peter van Dobben de Bruijn
Privacy in the coming age will be either a product for big companies, etc, or increasingly irrelevant as the web has shown (myspace/facebook generation).
Unfortunately too many people give up their privacy with facebook/myspace, gmail, and online data storage. They use these so they'll expect others to use them too. I haven't signed up with any of them though I may join Photo.net when I start a photo business. Otherwise I want to keep my data local, I use an external drive for backup. And I want to run my apps locally as well, and be able to take it with me so I got a laptop. the closest I may come to storing data online is if I use my Linux PC as a server and setup a VPN. Well, I also keep my email on my ISP's server.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
and get your data backed up by Google. So easy.
I only use Google for my email, nevertheless I still run nightly backups of everything in my Gmail account, to my server.
I use "Offlineimap". You might wish to look into it; I highly recommend it.
You, sir, author of TFA, are NOT a committed pessimist. If you were, you would not have adopted any of these Google gimmicks (which are, of course, all a foot in the door of privacy violation). Us genuine pessimists still haven't ever used a Google site except maps and search.