Back Up Your Cloud: How to Download All Your Data

You spend a lot of time online, crafting clever comments and reflective replies, sharing photos and videos that chronicle your life, and of course, corresponding with people via email and IMs. That adds up over the course of weeks, months, and years to gigabytes of data. And some of that information, if not all, is well worth keeping backed up. Because, face it, when you're not really paying for these social networks and services, who else is going to keep your ingenious statuses in perpetuity?

Don't believe me? Just last month, a Gmail glitch caused users to accidentally delete messages that were not even close to spam. Some Web-based email services have also shut down to avoid the prying eyes of the government.

Of course, there are plenty of ways to back up your local data to the cloud. From direct backup services like Mozy and Carbonite, to the synchronization products like Dropbox and OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive), online backup is everywhere, simple to set up, and accessible on most Internet-connected devices.

But that doesn't help with all that content you created online. With the possibility always looming of outages or shutdowns, even by the big boys (just ask fans of Meebo and Google Reader). That's why it's best to occasionally step in and use the tools provided—or some clever workarounds—to back up that data yourself. Check out your options on the next page.

(Also take a look at using the mega-Web-service ifttt to create on-going backups of your data using clever recipes to make everything you do redundant.)

Services Allowing Downloads

Facebook
On the desktop, go to Settings, click the link at "Download a copy of your Facebook data." You'll be taken to a page to do so, which says the downloaded file will include your posts, photos, videos, messages, conversations, info from your "about" page and more. You don't get to pick and choose what's included. Click the Start my Archive button, enter your Facebook password, and wait. It takes a while to gather years of data. You'll get an email with a link for downloading it when it's all done. The link only works for a few days; if you miss the window, you'll have to process the request all over again.

Twitter
Tweet much? Then you've probably got a big repository of data on Twitter worth downloading as a backup. On the desktop at Twitter.com, click the Gear icon and go to Settings from the dropdown menu. Toward the bottom you'll see a button that says "Request your archive." Like with Facebook, after it's gathered in a big .ZIP file, you'll get an email with a link for downloading.

Google Services
Google unveiled Gmail and Google Calendar downloading in December. Unlike other services, the tool allows you to only download a subset of data; for example, just get all the messages associated with one Gmail label, if desired. Visit the "Takeout" link and you can check off what you want to get; click the Edit links to select labels for email or selected calendars.

In addition to Gmail/Calendars, Google has other services/products that have downloadable data: Google Contacts, Google Drive, Google Voice, YouTube, Blogger, Google Photos, Messenger, and several items close to your Google+ account, such as Hangouts, Circles, and +1s. You can also grab your browser bookmarks and location history.

Check mark all that you want and click "Create Archive" button. Google will recommend that you don't do this on a public computer, which is good advice. You can leave the page open to get the download when ready, or get an email notification. This one definitely takes awhile if you're a heavy Google user—a message on the page says it could be days! Mine only took a couple hours to get 2.47GB worth of mail ready.

Yahoo
Yahoo doesn't make it easy to back up your data. Let alone your Yahoo Mail. The best you can do is individually download all the attachments and maybe set up message forwarding to another service. Or pay for the premium version and set up POP3 email so you can access it via software like Thunderbird, which stores everything locally on your hard drive.

Better yet, try Zimbra Desktop. It's free desktop software for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that gives you local access to multiple Web-based emails (Yahoo, Hotmail/Outlook.com, Gmail) and even social networks. It doubles as a place to have all your accounts at once, but also backs up your messages.

You can, however, do a full export of Yahoo Contact and Calendar to ICS format. They're less backups than they are made available to upload for use elsewhere.

Yahoo's Flickr photo service, however, does support several third-party downloader apps that make it simple to grab a backup of all your image. Bulkr is probably the best known.

LinkedIn
There's no way to back up your LinkedIn posts or that fancy resume that makes up your main page. But LinkedIn is all about contacts, and you can make a backup of all those names. On the desktop, click Network and go to Contacts. At the top right you'll see a Gear icon to click. You get options here for syncing your LinkedIn contacts with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook.com, even your iPhone address book, and with applications like CardMunch and Evernote. But for our purposes you want the link in the middle column that says "Export LinkedIn Connections." Your options: CSV or VCF files that can be imported by other systems.

Evernote
It could (and probably should) be the online repository for all you encounter online that's worth saving. Evernote is unique ecause it also has desktop installable apps for Windows and Mac, both of which allow you to make a backup of the database of items you've saved. You can click a notebook and select Export Notes, and then save it either in Evernote's own format, or direct to HTML. The other option is point some backup software at the local folder the Evernote app creates.

For more, see How To Stay Anonymous Online.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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