How to Fix ‘Google Drive Backup Not Working’

Google has been updating it’s backup system to provide fast and error free data transition via Google Drive. But it still has not come close enough to iOS backup system. Sometimes, Google Drive backs up your data and Settings but fails to import it. And sometimes, it simply stops backing up your data. Many users have reported that their Google Drive backup is not working and shows “Waiting to Backup” error all the time.

As above screenshot shows, Back up now button is disabled when you face Google Drive Backup error. We will fix this error using ADB commands. And the best part is that you won’t need root privileges to fix this issue.

Requirements to Fix “Waiting to Backup” Error in Google Drive

1. Enable USB Debugging in Phone

Before you start, make sure that you have enabled USB Debugging in our Android phone. If you have not enabled USB debugging, open Settings and go to About Phone.

Here, tap on the Build Number seven times to activate Developer Options. Press back button once and you will see “Developer Options” menu. Open it and scroll down to enable “USB debugging”. Click here for detailed tutorial.

2. Setup ADB on your Computer

Secondly, ADB must be properly set up on your computer. You can check this detailed tutorial for setting up ADB on your PC. After you are done with the basics, let’s move to the process.

Fixing Google Drive Backup Not Working Error

In this tutorial, we have explained step by step process using which you can fix Google Drive backup not working error. Let’s get through the process.

Step 1

First of all, connect your device to your computer and open the folder where you have installed ADB tools. Now, open command prompt in the same folder. Simply type cmd in the Explorer’s address bar and press Enter.

Step 2

A Command Prompt window will open in the same folder. Now, type adb devices command to check if the computer has detected your Android device or not.

You will get a prompt on your smartphone asking for permissions to allow USB debugging. Tap on Allow. If the command prompt shows the serial number of your device, connection is successful.

Step 3

Now after you have successfully established the connection with the Android device, type following commands one by one and press Enter. If you don’t get any errors during the process, restart your smartphone.

adb shell
bmgr run
bmgr backupnow --all

Step 4

Your Google Drive backup should start working again and the greyed out Back up now button should be enabled now.

If You Encounter Any Errors

In case, you get any kind of errors, while running adb commands, run following commands one by one and restart your phone. These commands will manually force Google Drive to start the backup process. Make sure you are in the ADB Shell mode already. If not, simply type adb shell command to get into ADB Shell mode.

bmgr backupnow appdata
bmgr backupnow --all

How to Solve Google Drive Backup Errors

Above tutorial explained, how you can fix Google Drive backup error using simple ADB commands. The backup system of Android is quite great but still faces issues like this. Hope this tutorial helped you solve Google Drive backup issue on your Android device. If you are still facing issues, feel free to write your queries and suggestions in the comment section down below.

SEE ALSO: How to backup your WhatsApp chats to your Google Drive?