[New] How to Backup Gmail on Your Hard Drive or USB Drive

Gmail is one of the most important online tools that most of us use on a daily basis. And, in some cases when you are moving from Gmail to another email service, it becomes necessary to take the backup of all the emails.

Sometimes you even need to take a backup of all your Gmail’s emails locally on your computer’s hard drive or on a USB drive.

So, what to do in that case?

Well, in this blog post, I will be explaining how you can take a complete backup of all the emails of your Gmail account on local storage easily.

Steps to Backup Gmail on Your Hard Drive or USB Drive

1. Open your Gmail account and go to Google Account
2. Navigate to Data and Personalization
3. Click on Download Your Data
4. Uncheck all the options except Mail and click Next Step
5. Customize Archive Format and click on Create Archive
6. Click on the Download Archive in the Email and Download the Archive

That’s it.

So, let me explain this in detail

Step 1 – Open your Gmail account and go to Google Account

First of all login into your Gmail by entering your username and password. After logging in successfully, click on the top-right profile icon and open Google Account as in the image below.

Step 2 – Navigate to Data and Personalization

When you will get into the Google Account settings, there will be a welcome screen and from here you can manage your info, privacy, and security to make Google work better for you.

From the left side menu, click on the Data and Personalization option as shown in the image below:

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Step 3 – Click on Download Your Data

After you click on the Data and Personalization option, scroll down and you will get a group of options titled “Download, delete, or make a plan for your data”.

Click on the Download Your Data button which will take you to the data export page.

Step 4 – Uncheck all the options except Mail and click Next Step

There will be a lot of options already checked; uncheck all the options except the “Mail” (since you’re trying to download the backup of your mail) and click on the Next Step.

I have also taken a screenshot for the same and attached below.

Step 5 – Customize Archive Format and click on Create Archive

In this step, you can choose the file format in which you want to download the backup file. There will be also an option to save the backup files to the cloud (Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, Box).

I have attached a screenshot for the same.

After customizing your archive, click on the Create Archive option which will start the archive process. Wait for the archive process to complete.

It will take few minutes depending upon the size of your archive and you will also get a confirmation email when the process gets completed.

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Step 6 – Click on the Download Archive in the Email and Download the Archive

As soon, your data archive gets completed, you will get an email saying that your archive data is ready to download, as shown in the image below…

Click on the Download Archive button and you will be taken to the real download page where you can download your requested data with just a click.

Your real Gmail Archive Download page will look something like the below image…

Here, just click on the Download button and your data will start downloading.

That’s it.

Final Words

Earlier, the process of downloading and taking the backup of the data associated with Google was a little complicated but now the Google has made it quite simple and easy.

Now, your personal and private data is in your control.

Hope I have explained everything related to downloading the Gmail’s local backup in detail. But, still, if you find any kind of difficulty then please let me know in the comments below.