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Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
Should you back up Google Workspace?
Yes, as soon as Gmail or Drive hold exchanges or documents you could not recreate. The robustness of Google’s data centres protects you from a Google outage. It does not protect you from an employee, an administrator or an attacker who deletes data, encrypts it through a synced workstation, or exfiltrates it.
Key points
- Beyond 30 days in the trash and 25 days of administrator restore, a deleted email or file is purged.
- A deleted account can only be restored for 20 days.
- Vault serves compliance; Google states that it is not designed as a backup tool.
- Minimum decision: Gmail (individual and group mailboxes) and shared drives.
When the answer is clearly yes
- The domain’s email is hosted by Google, and orders, contract documents or customer files pass through it.
- Shared drives are your de facto file server.
- Several people hold the administrator role, or a service provider does.
- Nobody could say today how to recover a folder that disappeared six weeks ago. With Google’s tools alone, beyond 30 days in the trash and 25 days of administrator restore, it is no longer possible.
When the scope can be narrowed
- Test accounts or mailing lists with no useful archive: exclude them, in writing.
- A business application that is already the source of truth, with Google used only for drafts: back up the business application, and accept the loss of the drafts.
- Vault is enabled for a specific dispute: keep it for that purpose, and back up anyway if you want a copy outside the domain. The two do not cancel each other out.
What you are weighing up
The cost of a daily copy outside the domain, kept for one to three months, against the cost of a week with an empty contact@ mailbox, or with the shared drive of the practice, the office or the workshop wiped out. The second cost is almost always higher, and it tends to strike on a Friday.
| Tool | What it provides | What it does not provide |
|---|---|---|
| Trash (30 days) then admin restore (25 days) | Recovering a recent deletion | A folder lost two months ago |
| Account restore (20 days) | Undoing the deletion of an account | An account deleted a month ago |
| Google Vault | Retaining and searching data for litigation | A backup: Google states that it is not designed for that |
| Backup outside the domain | Restoring to a chosen date, held by another party | eDiscovery compliance |
Upgrading to a more expensive Workspace edition “to get Vault” improves compliance. It does not give you free, point-in-time restores held by a third party.
Minimum decision
If you do only one thing: back up Gmail (individual and group mailboxes) and the shared drives. Each employee’s My Drive comes next, especially for those who do not use shared drives and keep everything in their own space. Also set the retention period: the CNIL, France’s data protection authority, points out that personal data cannot be kept indefinitely.
At WeDoBack
Both decisions, “back up Gmail, Calendar and Contacts” and “back up Drive”, are carried out at WeDoBack: one agent per address, SMART or INTEGRAL storage, an encrypted copy outside Google, with the key held by the customer. Whichever provider you choose, have the list of covered services and drives written into the quote: that is the list you will check during the first restore test.
Frequently asked questions
Our data is with Google: isn’t it already backed up?
It is replicated: a hardware failure at Google will not make it disappear. But a deletion made by a user or an administrator is replicated too. After 30 days in the trash and 25 days of administrator restore, Google permanently purges the item.
Is an edition with Vault enough?
For compliance, Vault is useful. To get back to work, no: the Google Vault FAQ states that it is not designed to be a backup or archiving tool. Many companies need both.
How long should a Google Workspace backup be kept?
One to three months covers most mistakes and compromises discovered late. Beyond that, you need a business or legal reason. The CNIL, France’s data protection authority, points out that personal data cannot be kept indefinitely, and mailboxes are full of it.
Further reading
Sources
Documents consulted in October 2026.
- Google Vault FAQ — Google Vault Help
- Restore a user’s permanently deleted email — Google Workspace Admin Help
- Recover deleted files and folders for Drive users — Google Workspace Admin Help
- Restore a recently deleted user — Google Workspace Admin Help
- Do I need to set a data retention period for my file? (in French) — CNIL, France’s data protection authority
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