Android Backups Get Deleted After Two Months Of No Usage

Android users can store backups for their Android devices in a Google Drive folder. This makes the process of restoring the data easier and more reliable than before. However, it turns out that the backups aren’t kept forever. Google actually deletes the device backups if there’s no device usage after two months. This means that all app and settings data is deleted after two months of no device usage.

This was spotted by a reddit user recently. Google only stores Android device backups for two months. If there’s no device usage after two months, all settings and app data stored in Google Drive is automatically deleted. There’s no other way to save the data even if you’re paying for additional Google Drive storage. All users get the same treatment.

You can check which backups of yours are due to expire by navigating to the backup folder in Google Drive. If there are any backups for devices that have been inactive for more than two weeks they will display an expiration date.

Google doesn’t really inform users about this. Perhaps it would be better if the company started sending out emails before backups are deleted just so users have the opportunity to check in and ensure that their backups aren’t deleted automatically.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Google