Having all your docs online with Google Docs is really helpful. You can access your files from any computer with an Internet connection. It is cloud-heaven! As a computer tech guy, I really like it since it’s an instant file backup, preventing any data recovery issues.
But, what if you want to have a copy of all your Google Docs on your computer? You know, a hard copy or to physically store the files on your hard drive or external hard drive. You might want this to satisfy your paranoid theories that one day Google may be no more…which is very hard to believe. Or if you will be going on a trip without Internet service, and need to work on a bunch of files. Or if you just need to archive old files or project work that you are not using every day which will allow for more Google Docs space. Yes, you can download a file here and there or even a folder. But, if you have gigs and gigs of files, your computer encounter a PC freezing issue or Mac spinning wheel.
If you want to download all your Google Docs, you can do so with Google Takeout. It comes free with your Google Apps account and will allow you to take all your Google Docs and download them to your computer or external hard drive. It will also download your Picasa Photos, Contacts, Buzz conversations, +1 messages, Knol articles (soon to be Annotum), and Voice logs.
Archiving your Google Docs is just plain smart for disaster recovery purposes. Say you lose office or home Internet for the day. Will you be able to access your files online? Nope. But, if you download your files, you’ll have access to them during disasters or offline situations.
