The New Year is always a great time to make some changes and for your digital home at least, none more important than backing up. In 2012 we wrote about using gmvault to take a copy of your Gmail but around a month ago Google finally added the ability to back it up (and Google Calendar data too) to the rest of their ‘Take Out’ service.
We visited the Take Out site and requested our files. The following day we received the email that our archive was ready (you’ve got a week to download before it’s deleted). We grabbed the 11.5GB of data (of which our Gmail was 9.28GB).
While you’re at it take the opportunity to secure your local data too. We use SyncBackSE on our Windows Home Server Jukebox to mirror the important stuff to our Drobo. Strangely the free version of SyncBack won’t work on our WHS box (a domestic OS) whilst it will on our SBS2008 (a commercial one). Anyway, SyncBackSE is well worth the £29 and the license allows for ‘home use’ on up to five computers. Also check out the open source FreeFileSync and take a look at Clonezilla for full drive images.
Lastly you’ll need an off-site backup and for that we use this little 2TB USB3 drive, updating it once a month then storing it at work. There are plenty of cloud based off-site backup solutions too if you have the bandwidth and CrashPlan for example will allow you to backup your data to a friend or family members house over the Internet.
What ever method you use, just make sure to start backing up. Someday it could just be the best new years resolution you ever made.
Google Gmail Blog : Backup Drives
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