How in the Tech

Backing up your Google Docs files

By Adam Myers ⋅ October 13, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Backup, Google Docs

Cloud computer has really taken the Internet by storm the last few years. The idea that all off your data can be offloaded and stored on the Internet or cloud and be accessible anywhere around the world is obviously appealing to most consumers. While the Pros are apparent, the Cons are equally apparent. If you don’t have an Internet connection, either your connection is down or you just aren’t near a connection, it’s not very convenient suddenly. Secondly, you’ve put your trust into your cloud provider that they will keep your files safe and secure, and well, keep your files altogether. T-Mobile Sidekick users were served a cold dose of reality of what can happen when you’ve kept all your proverbial eggs in the cloud. Just last week, after a network storage upgrade went horribly wrong, T-Mobile comes clean and admits that likely all of it’s Sidekick users’ data is lost, forever. Not a pleasant experience for those affected!

If such a disaster can occur at a large company such as T-Mobile, the same could be said for Google. Without having any numbers to back up this claim, I will surmise that the majority of users of Google’s free web services do not have a local copy of any the data Google hosts for them. Don’t feel ashamed – you are not alone as I will admit to the same bad practice. Not wanting to lose all my Google Docs I found some software to aid in maintaining local copies of my data.

GDocBackup is a free utility that provides an easy to user interface to Google Docs that allows one to export all their files in a few clicks. Pass your username and password as well as a local folder to store the files in and GDocBackup does the rest. While it has a few other features to help pair down what all it exports, the quick and dirty configuration and backup can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.