Google gives you the ability to export your data through an area called “Google Takeout”. From here, you can choose to export from Gmail, Google Voice, YouTube, Google Photos, Google Drive, and more. Based on how much data is available, you may receive an email within 5 minutes or a few days.

The email sends you off to a list of the recent exported requests.

Usually you have zip files that are 2 GB in size. Some of the file sizes are misleading, as the Mail downloaded as a 9.24 GB mbox file.

In addition, the file sizes reported in the Google Photos application itself was about 7 MB, but in reality, contained almost 6 GB.

The main shocker was YouTube at half a terabyte and 180 individual files to download. Most are under 2 GB, but I’ve had a few in double digits, and one at 67.96 GB.

The main issue is that I don’t see a way to download files other than through a web browser, as they require you to authenticate with a pass key before downloading – so automation to allow my NAS to download the files directly are not possible. Instead, I’m downloading to my Mac over WiFi, and transferring to the NAS over WiFi afterwards, rather than a direct cable to the optical network terminal.