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Google Has All My Data – How Do I Back It Up?
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Aug 09, 2008 03:06 PM
from the widespread-problem dept.
from the widespread-problem dept.
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?"
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Kill Somebody (Score:5, Funny)
Tried that. (Score:3, Funny)
Easy! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Easy! (Score:5, Funny)
Idunno, Sergey. Ask Larry what he does.
Parent
Re:Easy! (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
You chose a poor example. Pretty much all the Mobile Me services store the data both on Apple's servers and on the local machine, by default.
I know you meant this as a joke, but your suggestion actually would allow a user to regain control of their data, albeit probably not in the most flexible way.
Parent
Re:Easy! (Score:5, Informative)
There's also notMac [notmacchallenge.com], which replaces .Mac.
Parent
Re:Easy! (Score:5, Interesting)
It might enable them to regain control of their future data. But they have almost certainly lost control of their current data.
About the only way of retaining control over your data whilst having a third party store it would be if you encrypt in such a way that that party will never have access to anything other than the cyphertext. Which has the side effect that you can't process that data with web based apps.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah I mean that as a joke (since a lot of people here think Apple is as evil as Google).
Any sane person using Leopard will also have Time Machine enabled, on an external hard drive, meaning a local and external backup for most people, and three backups for those also using MobileMe.
You're right, using a Mac as an example was the worst possible choice.
Uh, Google? (Score:5, Informative)
And BTW, web apps != "the cloud".
Re:Uh, Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
And BTW, web apps != "the cloud".
Huh? Google web apps, at the very least, can be considered "the cloud", unless you are arguing that the term "cloud computing" has no meaning.
Parent
Re:Uh, Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct, it's an unnecessary buzzword (is that an oxymoron?) to cover something that's existed since the days of mainframes and dumb terminals. You know, that limiting, ancient paradigm that led to the microcomputer revolution because it sucked so bad? :)
Parent
Re:Uh, Google? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's needlessly redundant.
Necessarily redundant is an oxymoron.
(And so are many people when burnt.)/jokealert
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You're confusing an oxymoron with a tautology.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No, it's rhetorical tautology.
Re:Uh, Google? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Uh, Google? (Score:5, Funny)
"How can I regain some control and back this all up?"
I suggest searching [Meth] for answers!
Parent
why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
Re:why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would work, unless Google itself deletes your account [blogspot.com] or all of your email [techcrunch.com].
Backups are meant to cover more than just hard drive failures, otherwise RAID 1/5 would be sufficient.
Also, if you can't backup your data from Google, you can't switch from Google to anyone else, so you are locked in.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Right, and not to mention that time that they had an error and a lot of people really did lose messages.
Personally, I don't keep anything vital on google services except email. The email gets backed up via imap periodically.
This works fine for me because I don't usually have items that I'd be upset about losing, most of the things I do have are not sent over email or are easily backed up individually.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Also, if you can't backup your data from Google, you can't switch from Google to anyone else, so you are locked in.
Switch!? What is this crazy talk!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe a better argument is for company-level control of user information rather than just user-level backups. If an employee deletes all of their e-mail, the company can't comply with document retention requirements. Likewise, deleting a user eliminates all of their data with no backup recourse.
For e-mail, I imagine what you have to do is migrate service from gmail to positini (google subsidiary) to get the added functionality.
* shrugs shoulders * (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know ... Google it
Not sure about one-touch... (Score:5, Informative)
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".
Re:Not sure about one-touch... (Score:5, Informative)
But Google solutions tend to at least support established open standards.
That is: You can archive your Gmail account via IMAP.
You might have to rejigger some of your tags to end up with a folder structure in your IMAP archive
Otherwise it'll just be all your mail in one folder.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/nested-folders-in-gmail.html [blogspot.com]
/Unless Gmail has changed something since that was written.
//Personally, I don't consider tags a replacement for folders
Parent
Re:Not sure about one-touch... (Score:4, Informative)
For Google Calendar:
or
For GMail:
For Picassa:
or
For YouTube
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You appear to have linked to yet another Google technology which is used internally, which they've open sourced because they've found it useful.
It's no more relevant to this discussion than what filesystem they're using. (And, for the record, they rolled their own FS anyway.)
Remember: I said "support open standards". I didn't say "exclusively uses open standards for everything, including stuff the public was never meant to see."
Are you running on OpenFirmware? Have you flashed your BIOS with Coreboot?
No? Th
Not one solution (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not one solution (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some mostly self-explanatory links:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ [mozilla.com]
http://www.zindus.com/ [zindus.com]
http://lifehacker.com/software/download-managers/geek-to-live--wget-local-copies-of-your-online-research-delicious-digg-or-google-notebook-200360.php [lifehacker.com]
http://lifehacker.com/399407/how-to-sync-any-desktop-calendar-with-google-calendar [lifehacker.com]
http://gears.google.com/ [google.com]
Parent
It's simple! (Score:5, Funny)
why back up (Score:2, Troll)
Re:why back up (Score:5, Insightful)
Google does NOT have your backups. They have redundancy in their data storage, but when their servers get the command to delete something, it gets deleted everywhere, permanently!
See their own faq: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50208 [google.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm saying that if that if the Sheriff, well, to be honest, the FBI rolls in, and says, we're taking these backup tapes, then they'll have it. Not deleted.
But if you roll in and say, hey, I want my old emails, they'll say, sorry, no, we have no way of giving you just your old emails back in a timely manner.
That said, Google has resisted what it correctly considered to be unlawful demands for information.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes please... Besides I did before too. :-)
Re:why back up (Score:4, Interesting)
> Google has their own backups I am sure.
What makes you think that they back up the users' data? (Note: users, not customers.)
Parent
Back away, slowly... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Cloud Addiction (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Ask Slashdot Troll ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ask Slashdot Troll ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Backing up email (Score:3, Interesting)
Use Outlook and connect to GMAIL through IMAP, then save off your email to a .PST file via the Import/Export tool.
-M
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Ewww... Outlook? PST file?! I think you're on the wrong site.
one-touch solution? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Easy scripted Backup for Gmail at least (Score:3, Informative)
I use http://www.gmail-backup.com/ [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.
Has anyone asked Google for a restore? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Just a few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What does Google owe you? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What does Google owe you? (Score:5, Insightful)
> In the absence of law, providers, such as Google, will write naturally terms of use that
> mostly benefit themselves.
Real providers with whom you have a contract are obligated by law to do whatever the contract says they have to do (assuming that you hold up your end by paying the bill). Advertising agencies such as Google that provide free services for promotional purposes have no legal obligations to their "users" whatever. Nor should they.
Parent
Have you checked out Google Gears? (Score:5, Informative)
several solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:stupid question (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:stupid question (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent