Okay, Google, hand over what you’ve got#
Decided to grab the data Google has collected about me. 7×50GB + 30GB, that’s quite a lot…
When creating a takeout request, Google lets you choose the archive type and size — zip/tgz, ranging from 2 to 50 GB. I went with the largest ones, since I didn’t want to deal with hundreds of small archives, and that turned out to be the right call.
Oh, and my very first takeout request actually failed — Google sent an email saying “sorry, couldn’t do it” — the details showed it couldn’t export data from Nest. Not sure why, whether it’s related to the thermostat in my previous apartment being inaccessible or just a glitch. But when creating the next request I simply left Nest unchecked, and the archive was generated fine — 56 products (services Google hasn’t killed yet) instead of 57.
Okay, user — take it if you can!#
Google spent about a week or so (I didn’t time it exactly) archiving all that data, then sent me a notification that it was ready. Downloading via wget obviously didn’t work — you’d need to authenticate wget somehow, no dice. I downloaded manually through the browser, re-downloading the files that failed several times.
Downloaded. 432 GB…
When I thought 2TB on a laptop was two (if not four) times more than I’d ever need, I wasn’t expecting that compressed backups of my Google data would eat up a quarter of my free space. In a moment of poor judgment I tried to unpack it all, but quickly realized the unpacked volume would be much larger and there simply wouldn’t be enough free space — everything is already devoured by Docker and who knows what else (wait, what exactly?).
Now three days of uploading this to the server#
$ /opt/homebrew/Cellar/rsync/3.2.7_1/bin/rsync --rsync-path=/bin/rsync -r -v --progress -e ssh ./ ansible@10.10.10.10:/volume1/backup/google_takeout/disfinder.gmail.com/2023-12-25-all
sending incremental file list
takeout-20231221T191146Z-001.tgz
53,687,107,361 100% 43.35MB/s 0:19:41 (xfr#1, to-chk=7/9)
takeout-20231221T191146Z-002.tgz
53,687,109,371 100% 195.24MB/s 0:04:22 (xfr#2, to-chk=6/9)
takeout-20231221T191146Z-003.tgz
53,687,107,296 100% 4.40MB/s 3:14:02 (xfr#3, to-chk=5/9)
takeout-20231221T191146Z-004.tgz
53,687,104,226 100% 28.09MB/s 0:30:22 (xfr#4, to-chk=4/9)
takeout-20231221T191146Z-005.tgz
7,589,330,944 14% 22.34MB/s 0:33:35So a full week had passed and I still hadn’t seen what was actually inside those archives. Running tar -tvf... is an option of course, but you want to see the full picture.
Hopefully the server will have enough space for the unpacked stuff, and I won’t be surprised if I have to unpack things twice to a different location — the encrypted volume doesn’t like long filenames, and whether Google loves them and stuffs them into its takeout, I don’t know yet.
2023-12-30: copy completed
sent 299,997,238,931 bytes received 6,560,187 bytes 13,301,283.52 bytes/sec
total size is 407,294,955,301 speedup is 1.36Compared md5 hashes — they match.
Unpacking#
real 223m44.980s
user 56m50.523s
sys 148m21.597sUnpacked pretty fast.
The most space was taken by Google Photos — no surprise there — followed by the YouTube folder with my own uploaded videos, then Google Drive, and finally mail.
Here’s what the unpacked folder looks like in ncdu:
--- Takeout --------
/..
316.7 GiB [##########################] /Google Photos
42.8 GiB [### ] /YouTube and YouTube Music
15.5 GiB [# ] /Drive
13.1 GiB [# ] /Mail
1.4 GiB [ ] /Google Chat
835.6 MiB [ ] /Location History (Timeline)
647.4 MiB [ ] /Blogger
230.2 MiB [ ] /My Activity
183.5 MiB [ ] /Maps
85.3 MiB [ ] /Keep
59.8 MiB [ ] /Access Log Activity
29.0 MiB [ ] archive_browser.html
13.5 MiB [ ] /Fit
13.3 MiB [ ] /Contacts
10.9 MiB [ ] /Voice
4.6 MiB [ ] /Chrome
2.8 MiB [ ] /Street View
588.0 KiB [ ] /Google Play Store
412.0 KiB [ ] /Recorder
412.0 KiB [ ] /Google Pay
408.0 KiB [ ] /Saved
364.0 KiB [ ] /Calendar
224.0 KiB [ ] /Groups
184.0 KiB [ ] /Reminders
184.0 KiB [ ] /Android Device Configuration Service
152.0 KiB [ ] /Google Account
104.0 KiB [ ] /Google Shopping
100.0 KiB [ ] /Home App
84.0 KiB [ ] /My Maps
64.0 KiB [ ] /Maps (your places)
60.0 KiB [ ] /Google Play Movies _ TV
52.0 KiB [ ] /Profile
48.0 KiB [ ] /Google Play Books
40.0 KiB [ ] /News
36.0 KiB [ ] /Tasks
36.0 KiB [ ] /Discover
24.0 KiB [ ] /Google Business Profile
24.0 KiB [ ] /Shopping Lists
12.0 KiB [ ] /Google Podcasts
12.0 KiB [ ] /Google Workspace Marketplace
12.0 KiB [ ] /Assistant Notes and Lists
12.0 KiB [ ] /Google Finance
12.0 KiB [ ] /Assignments
12.0 KiB [ ] /Search Contributions
12.0 KiB [ ] /Google Help CommunitiesExploration#
Google Photos#
Photos are organized into album folders and additionally into year-based folders. What’s annoying is that duplicates are present — even though in the cloud, adding a file to a new folder doesn’t create a copy, the download process doubled them up:
$ find . -type f -size +500M
./folder1/PXL_20220915_013956479.mp4
./folder2/PXL_20220915_013956479.mp4
...Finding time to sort and fix this is unlikely, but those videos would be the top candidates to delete from Google Cloud — they take up too much space, and who ever watches them anyway?…
Gmail#
One huge single file at 13 gigs. Well… Not surprising, considering all the attachments are encoded inside (base64-encoded?). But now it’s finally possible to clean out the old junk from the mailbox.
/Takeout/Mail --------------------------------
13.1 GiB [##########################] All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox
40.0 KiB [ ] /User SettingsGoogle Drive#
At least no surprises here — files and folders, just like the web interface. I didn’t check for duplicates, but I don’t think there are any. And the sizes aren’t anything to worry about.
Outro#
This takeout was initiated while writing an article about backups and provided some food for thought and material to work with. I started writing this post on December 28, 2023, and finished it on January 15, 2024 — and there’s still more that could be added, but the steam has run out for now. At the very least, it’s now clear what Google has and where it lives — and more importantly, what can be deleted. Stay tuned.