Google Drive as a Dirt Cheap Backup Solution

When Google Drive dropped the prices for their cloud storage it is has become an excellent option to store your online backup. 

Step 1: Sign Into Google

If you already have a Google account (is there anyone that does not have a Google account) you will need to create one. If you already have one you will need to be able to login. If you have two factor authentication turned on you will probably want to use an application specific password for the backup software to use or it will fail logging in. You can easily use the 15GB of free storage Google gives you to test this and purchase more storage once you know it is working.

Step 2 – Download and Install Duplicati

If you are going to backup your data to Google Drive you want to make sure it is well encrypted and have to process automated as much as possible. Using Duplicati as your backup client provides you with both, strong encryption and a relatively easy to use client to manage your backups and restores. 

The client runs on Windows, Mac and Linux so people on all platforms can take advantage of this. It can also backup to Amazon S3, Microsoft’s OneDrive, Google Drive/Google Docs, Rackspace Cloud Files, WebDAV servers and even FTP and SFTP servers so you have a lot of options.

When I went to install on my Windows test machine I was told I needed to install Microsoft .NET Framework. I downloaded that from Microsoft and installed it to continue setting up Duplicati.

Step 3: Setup Your Backup Set

Once you have Duplicati installed it will start the backup wizard. You can select the files you want to backup and the destination. To backup to your Google Drive account simply select the Google Docs option. You can enter your login and a folder to store your backups in. If you have the Google Drive desktop client installed you will probably not want to sync that folder, but that is up to you. Once you have setup your backup and destination Duplicati can run your first backup.

Upload Troubleshooting – If you have trouble uploading your backup to Google Drive, as I did in my testing, try setting the volume size to a smaller settings. I finally set the volume size down to only 2MB and Duplicati had no problem uploading.

Step 4: Relax

Knowing that your files are safely backed up to your Google Drive storage and safely encrypted so no one else can read then.

Things to Consider

Using Google Drive storage as a backup using Duplicati is a great way to backup your files. Google Drive offers inexpensive storage and by using a tool like Duplicati you can ensure your files are safely encrypted from prying eyes.

The downside of using a tool like Duplicati is your files are not easily accessible for access because they are encrypted. If you want to use your Google Drive cloud storage more as cloud storage with easy access you would need to upload your files either without encryption or use tools like Viivo or Boxcryptor. It really depends on what you need. You can easily use part of your Google Drive storage for backup and part for easy access cloud storage.

While Google Drive storage has come down in price the need to use another tool to backup to that storage and to safely encrypt your files is a little more work. This makes services like Backblaze, CrashPlan and many of our top cloud backup services excellent options because of the ease of use of their services. However, if you are only wanting to pay for one cloud storage service and still take advantage of it to store your cloud backup as well Google Drive storage could fill your need.