While I’m a big fan of Cloud computing;  I realize there are some inherent risks.  Saving all data in the cloud can be dangerous as much as it’s useful.  Outages, server crashes, loss of internet, or even account hijacking can remove your accessibility to our data!

I was motivated by these articles here:  Sidekick users loss data to Cloud and Cloud Cautions .  To find and write a solution to Gmail backup. Since I, along with millions of others, save important email in cloud folders with Gmail.

With Gmail backup, all of your saved, sent, archived, folders, and even trash are downloaded to text files for safekeeping on your PC.  This application will also let your upload back to a Gmail account and restore your email- even if it’s a different Gmail account.

  The application is super simple to use and does not take long to run.  The actual emails are small and do not take up much space.  You will need to tell Windows to associate the files as text files on some systems if you want to read the emails on your local PC..

The program only asks for a folder to save email too ( you can make one and back that up to secondary devices also) and that Imap settings for Gmail are enabled ( most new Gmail accounts this is already active and Gmail backup has instructions to set this correctly ).

  This application is free and has no other crapware trying  to install itself with it.

  Get it here: Gmail Backup homepage

  I would advise anybody that uses Gmail to do this at least once every few months.

  More on Cloud Computing here:  Cloud 1

                                                  Cloud 2