How to back up your Gmail online ?

1. POP to alternate email account

This method is very similar to the first method above, but instead of exporting your email to a local client, you’re going to forward it to an alternate email account, ideally something different from Gmail just to be completely sure, likeYahoo Mail or Hotmail. Just a reminder: select “Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)” if you want to back up your old emails as well.

2. Hotmail TrueSwitch

Hotmail TrueSwitch is a quick and easy way to copy your mail, contacts and calendar from Gmail to your Hotmail account. Simply enter your details and it will automatically copy your Gmail emails and contacts to your Windows Live Hotmail account. With this tool, you can also choose to forward your future emails.

According to the site, this method may take up to 24 hours, but you’ll get notified via email once everything is done copying.

3. Use Backupify

Backupify is an online service that backs up your cloud-based data, offering an all-in-one archiving, search and restore for 15 popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and Flickr. A free account lets you back up 5 accounts on 2GB of storage while the Unlimited account is priced at $19.99/month.

Backupify performs daily or weekly backups of your online data, based on your subscription plan, though for larger accounts or accounts with large single data files it may take up to 48-72 hours to get your initial back up set up. It maintains your data archive until you opt out or delete it.

Most of these steps can be done in less than 10 minutes and I guarantee you that it’s definitely worth the time and effort. It may not be a big deal now because you’ve been fortunate with keeping your data so far but it’s better safe than sorry.