Today I Learned Google provides users a simple way to archive and download all of their data on Google. Including Gmail and Drive.
Few days ago someone approached me with a problem, “My Gmail ran out of space and I need all my emails, they contain important data.”
Instead of doing what I usually do and telling him he should have thought about a solution before the matter getting out of hand, I looked around for solutions. This resulted in finding a thorough how-to on backing up Gmail using a command line tool named gmvault on lifehacker.
It turned out to be a very good tool and did the work alright. But I looked for other ways too and that was when I stumble upon Google takeout which lets you create an archive of all your data on Google services.
So my archive got ready in an hour, and my attempts to download it on a VPS failed miserably. And by miserably I mean after a few tries I encountered an error saying: “Sorry, you have already downloaded that archive the maximum number of times.”
Looks like the only way to download them is to do it on a modern customer browser. Which is reasonable since the archive contains A LOT of sensitive data and is unencrypted. But with my Internet connection and prices, downloading with a web browser is practically impossible. Oh and to worsen the situation, once I tried to download it on Chrome I faced a 403 error presenting itself in XML format to me. The joys of using the Internet in Iran!
1454326119 - Tehran
1454420830
1454488687
1456770430