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Having read this excellent post from HN I am now looking into options to backup my Gmail Account.

I would like a system whereby I can

  • Automate backups using a cron job
  • Encrypt my backups (not really part of the actual backup process)
  • Store the backups in such a way that I can send them to Amazon S3 (i.e. tarball)
  • Have incremental backups (i.e. backup script should be able to accept a 'backup from' date)
  • Have the ability to restore my emails to their current state (i.e. maintain labels)

So far, I have been unable to find anything that achieves the above, but I think that for anyone with a Gmail account, it is very important to make good backups of your emails (and I would recommend reading the linked article for anyone who hasnt).

Does anyone have a good idea for a solution to the above?

2 Answers 2

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BaGoMa may be what you're looking for. It's a Python script to backup/restore your Gmail Mail. Uses IMAP, but is smart so that it only downloads each message once, no matter how many labels it has applied to it, yet it will maintain labels and flags (read, flagged, etc.) for restores.

Never deletes message from your Gmail account. A restore only uploads missing messages from the local store, it doesn't attempt to sync your account with its contents. In addition, backup doesn't delete messages from the local store either. There's a separate compact command that will delete messages from the local store if they don't exist on the Gmail server.

Since it only backs up mail via IMAP, it can't/doesn't get certain things: Contacts, Chats, Filters (and other settings), Superstars, Labels you chose to hide from IMAP (imagine that!), and Trash/Spam.

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BaGoMa looks like it might be better but I use getmail and a rule on gmail to add a label to mail I want backup.

It also uses IMAP, stores the data in mbox format on the local disk and can be easily encrypted.

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