How to Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive Easily - 3 Ways Included

Why Do We Need to Back Up Gmail Emails to Hard Drive?

Gmail is one of the top email services offered by Google. It allows users to access it through a web browser or an official mobile application. Users can also use it to store personal information and send and receive emails over the Internet. But sometimes, there are chances of data loss for Gmail users. That's why many users consider backing up their Gmail emails to their hard drives. The common reasons are as follows:

• Offline access to Gmail emails. In order to access and work with Gmail emails and their attachments, users have to save Gmail emails to disk.
• Protection of Gmail emails. Sometimes there is data loss due to unwanted or unorganized threats/vulnerabilities, and that's the reason for backing up Gmail emails. It also prevents data loss due to the accidental deletion of emails.
• Migrate data from Gmail. If users want to transfer their Gmail account data to another email client, they need to backup Gmail emails to their hard disk.
• Due to the features of Gmail. Sometimes, users get frustrated due to the unstable features of Gmail. Sometimes Gmail account may happen to be inaccessible.
• Free up storage space. If the storage space of Gmail account is more than its limit, then the user wants to save it in an external hard drive.

Top 3 Ways to Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive

In this section, we will learn about various manual and professional techniques that enable users to backup Gmail emails directly to hard disk. All these techniques are safe and there is no chance of data loss. Please follow the different solution steps correctly and carefully.

#1. Save Gmail Email Into PDF

1. Open Gmail on your browser and sign in with the required credentials (Gmail email and password).
2. Form Inbox folder to open the emails you want to save to your hard drive.

3. Click on the Print All icon at the top right of your browser. Here you can preview the message on the selected email. Select the different built-in features like Destination, Pages, Layout, and Colour.

4. Finally, click the Print button to start backing up your email.
5. Then, a pop-up tab will open on your screen, enter the File Name, and press the Save button to complete the process.

6. After saving the email as a PDF, copy the email from your PC and paste it to the target hard drive. This is one of the ways to save Gmail emails to hard drive.

#2. Export Gmail Emails to Hard Drive Using Google Takeout

1. Open Gmail and login with Gmail email address and password.
2. On the dashboard that opens, click the Profile icon and select the Manage your Google Account option.

3. Select "Data & personalization" from the left menu.

4. In the Data and personalization Wizard, scroll down the page. Select "Download your data" and click on it.

5. Then the Google Takeout page will open, click the Deselect all button.

6. Now, scroll down the page and check the mail function. Tap on the option that All Mail data included.

7. Then in the pop-up menu, uncheck the Include all messages in Mail checkbox. Select the folder, and click on the OK button.

8. After that, scroll the page and tap on the Next step button. Here, choose the file type, frequency, and destination section.

9. Now click on the Create Export button and download the Archive files into the local system for further use.
10. Once the archive files have been created, download them to your hard drive and use a file archiver like 7-zip to open it.

#3. Backup Gmail Emails to Hard Drive Automatically

The third way is to use professional email backup software to help you save Gmail emails to disk.  AOMEI Backupper's "Outlook Backup" feature can help backup Outlook desktop.  The emails supported by Outlook desktop include: Microsoft 365, Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, which means AOMEI Backupper also supports backup of these emails.

AOMEI Backupper enables you to backup all data in Outlook to various backup storage devices, including local disk, external hard drive, USB flash drive, and NAS device, etc. You are able to backup your email data daily/weekly/monthly with the “Schedule Backup” feature. But when you add email accounts of third party email service providers, such as Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, you need to change some settings in their corresponding web side. The following is an example of how to modify Gmail when adding it to the desktop side of Outlook (with IMAP enabled): 

1. Go to https://mail.google.com.

2. Select the settings wheel and then select Settings.

3. Select Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

4. Under IMAP Access, make sure Enable IMAP is selected.

After you add Gmail to your Outlook desktop, you can use AOMEI Backupper to save emails from Gmail to hard drive. Please install this software on your computer first, it has a thirty-day trial period, you can try it first.

1. Add the account you want to backup in Outlook and close it. Then, open AOMEI Backupper Professional and click Backup and Outlook Backup.

2. Click Add Outlook data and select the Gmail account with the entire mailbox you want to backup. Then click OK.

3. Select a local drive or external hard drive to save all Gmail emails in Outlook.  

4. Enable Daily, Weekly, or Monthly schedule backup and be sure the option Wake the computer to run scheduled task is checked.

5. Confirm you select the entire mailbox and click Start Backup to backup all Gmail emails and other items.

✨ Notes: 

• You can change “Incremental Backup” to “Differential Backup” in a scheduled backup task. And it’s based on full backup and safer.
• To prevent backup disk full issues, the most effective method is to delete old backup images on a regular basis. Click Backup Scheme and enable it.

Final Words

This article provides you with three effective ways to help you backup Gmail emails to hard drive. You can choose the most suitable one to protect Gmail data depending on your situation. Compared with the first two methods, the third one is more versatile. It can not only help you backup Gmail, but also backup other emails.

Besides email backup, it also has system backup and disk backup, etc., which can provide daily protection for your computer. You can use it to backup your system to the cloud. So when you encounter any serious system problem later, you can use this backup to restore your computer to a normal working state easily and quickly.