Guides / Backup

How to Back Up Google Drive to Another Cloud

Google Drive is storage, not a backup. Backing it up to a different provider means a deleted file, a suspended account or a bad sync cannot reach both copies.

What you are protecting against

The 15 GB on a free Google account is shared between Drive, Gmail and Google Photos, which is why accounts fill unexpectedly and why people delete in a hurry to make space. Deleted files sit in Trash for 30 days and then they are gone.

Account suspension is rarer and worse. It takes Drive, Gmail and Photos at once, and appeals are slow. A copy at another provider is unaffected by anything Google decides about your account.

What happens to Google Docs

Docs, Sheets and Slides are not files in the ordinary sense — they exist only inside Google. A backup exports them as .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, so the copies open in Word, Excel or LibreOffice without Google being involved.

That is worth understanding before you need it: the backed-up copy of a Doc is a Word file. It is readable by anything, and it is not a live Google Doc any more.

Setting it up

Connect Google Drive and the destination, pick the folder to protect — or the whole drive — choose a schedule, and leave it. The first run copies everything; later runs copy only what has changed since.

Every file is checked on arrival against the destination provider’s own hash — Dropbox returns a content_hash, OneDrive and pCloud return a hash we compare — so a copy that did not land intact is sent again rather than counted.

Nothing in your backup is ever overwritten or deleted. A file that changes at the source is copied alongside the old one as "photo (backup 2026-08-25).jpg", so the previous version is still there. Deleting a file from the source does not delete it from the backup.

Common questions

Does Google Takeout do the same thing?

Takeout exports a one-off archive, usually as a set of large zip files you download and store yourself. It is a snapshot, not a schedule, and on large drives the export frequently fails partway. A backup route runs on its own and copies only what changed.

Where should I back Google Drive up to?

Somewhere with a different company and a different login. pCloud is popular for this because of lifetime plans and EU data centres; Dropbox and OneDrive work equally well. Backing up to a second Google account protects against deletion but not account loss.

Will my folder structure be preserved?

Yes. Folders are recreated exactly as they are in Drive, including nesting and empty folders, so the backup is browsable rather than a flat dump of files.

What about files shared with me?

Files owned by someone else can be backed up if you can read them, and they do not count against your own Drive quota. What you cannot do is back up something you have lost access to, so if a shared folder matters to you, copy it while you still can.

Set it up once

Scheduled, append-only, checksum-verified. The file manager is free; the Backup Plan is $89 a year for unlimited routes.

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