WhatsApp chat backups will no longer count against your Google Drive allowance,but you have to act now to save your old messages
There is good news and bad news for all WhatsApp users. The good news is that from November 12 you’ll be able to backup all of your WhatsApp chats for free. A deal has been made between Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Google to allow users to store their WhatsApp chats on Google Drive without using up their Google Drive allowance. Google only offers 15 GB of free Drive allowance, which isn’t much these days, so having all your WhatsApp images, documents, sound files, and voice notes backed up for free is great news.
WhatsApp is now much more than just a messaging service and offers a great way to store your correspondence for posterity. If you’ve backed up your messages, WhatsApp offers a searchable way to find old messages or any notes you may have left yourself. You never know when you could end up in a dispute and need an exact word-for-word copy of what somebody said to you. WhatsApp offers this, even if you lose or change your mobile device. Furthermore, if you set up a group with yourself, WhatsApp gives you a way of saving all those photos, videos, memes, and GIFs that you love without having to fork out for extra Google Drive storage. Pretty cool.
The bad news is that all of your old WhatsApp chats that haven’t been updated in more than a year will be automatically removed from Google Drive storage on the same date. If you don’t want to lose all of your old WhatsApp chats you’ll need to take action now. This is what you need to do:
How to save all your old WhatsApp chats
WhatsApp announced that in order to avoid old messages being deleted you should manually backup your WhatsApp data before November 12. It is also a good idea to do this when connected to Wi-Fi as backup files can vary in size. Also, to backup your WhatsApp data you’re going to need a Google account activated on your phone and enough free space to create the backup.
To create a Google Drive backup you need to hit Menu, then Settings, and then go to Chats and hit Chat Backup. You then need to hit Chat Backup and select a time frame that isn’t Never. Put in the details of the Google Account you’ll be using for the backup and you’re good to go. You may also want to change Back up over to Wi-Fi to avoid using all your data backing up your WhatsApp.
This will have you good to go for regular backups of your WhatsApp data. You still have to perform a Manual backup, however, to save all of your old WhatsApp chats. To do this, once again navigate to Chat Backup menu via Settings and Chats. Once you’re there hit BACK UP and Google Drive will begin to backup up all your WhatsApp data. This first backup will likely be the biggest of them all, and WhatsApp recommends connecting your phone to a power source as it could take some time. After the first backup, however, each backup will only include the new data created since the last backup.
