How to back up Gmail to your computer or local drive

Karicharla Venugopa asked for a safe way to back up a large collection of Gmail messages to a local drive. I've been using Gmail for nearly a decade. Within the 40,000-plus messages I've sent or received, I have important professional correspondence and personal messages from loved ones who have since passed on. I really don't want to lose them. I know that Google backs up its servers. But I still feel better with all those messages stored locally. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing...