Bash script for backing up selected google docs on a mounted google drive. Copies the files to new files with "BACKUP YYYY-MM-DD" added to the file name.

gdoc-backup.sh

#! /bin/bash

# Google Drive path
BASEDIR='/Users/xxxx/Google Drive/'

# Files to backup
FILES=(
	'Some Folder on Your Drive/Some Spreadsheet.gsheet'
	'Some Other Folder on Your Drive/Some Doc.gdoc'
)

# Date appended to the file to mark it as a backup.
DATE=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')

# Loop through files to back them up.
for i in "${FILES[@]}"; do
	ORIGINALPATH="$BASEDIR$i"
	BAREPATH=${ORIGINALPATH%.*}
	EXTN=${ORIGINALPATH##$BAREPATH}
	BACKUPPATH="$BAREPATH BACKUP $DATE$EXTN"
	cp "$ORIGINALPATH" "$BACKUPPATH"
	echo "Backup Complete: $BACKUPPATH"
done

I place this in my google docs root folder and can run it as follows:

bash /Users/xxxx/Google\ Drive/gdoc-backup.sh

I've also added this to my laptops cron:

crontab -e

Then I added the line:

0 10 1 * * /bin/bash /Users/xxxx/Google\ Drive/gdoc-backup.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

This runs at 10am on the first of every month.

Maybe I'm missing something, but are you aware that .gsheet, .gdoc etc are just pointers to the files online? Look in those actual files and inspect the contents? I don't think this backup will help you much if Google Docs disappears/goes down.