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Use Your GMail Account as a Virtual Hard Drive

April 20th, 2007 · by David Bradley >> 23 Comments

GMail hard driveIf you’ve got a Google Mail (GMail) account you’ve probably noticed the number of bytes of storage space rises, seemingly endlessly. Originally, users had 1 gigabyte at their disposal but when I logged into my GMail account this morning it told me I had 2.8 Gb of space available. But I am only using a few megabytes of that, as I always download all email into Thunderbird so I can work offline if I have to.

Anyway, almost 3 Gb of space to play with! But how? How can you put that space to good use? You could email yourself various files as attachments, I suppose, archive the emails you send yourself, and use that as a kind of virtual backup system. Or, you could opt for Firefox and the GSpace add on

Once you have the GSpace add on, it is a simple matter of configuring it, click GSpace in the Firefox Tools menu and if you’ve never used it before, you’ll get a hand-holding session as the explorer type interface opens up. But, you won’t need it, it’s very easy to use.

Here’s a bonus tip for those who cannot cope with just almost 3 Gb of space – open another GMail account and add that to the GSpace configuration file (Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I told suggested that, it might be against the GMail T&Cs.

Once you’re set up with GSpace, logout and then log back into your account at the GMail page proper and set a filter to archive automatically the files you upload, otherwise you’ll get notifications of new emails for each one in Google Talk and your GMail notifier addons. Moreover, if you are accessing GMail via POP3 as I do, you will end up downloading all those files into your standalone email program, which kind of defeats the object of having all that extra space.

How can I archive gspace mails (highly recommended)?

A. 1. Login to the actual gmail web interface.

2. Click on “Create Filter” link at the top

3. Give your email address in the “From” and “To” fields. Also, give “d$” in the subject field (as the subject contains d$ at the end).

4. Click “Next step” button. Here mark the checkbox which says “Skip the inbox(archive it)”. You can also give a label at the “Apply the label” dropdown (recommended). This would be useful when you want to search for a particular file at a later point.

5. Click “Add Filter” and you are done. Now the uploaded files(emails) are not shown in the inbox.

Finally, if you need some serious online storage space consider getting a big chunky network attached storage, NAS, device with its own built-in server (e.g. a Buffalo Linkstation). These machines plug straight into your network router and can be set up for remote access. Just remember not to switch off your router and network attached storage at the outlet if you are planning a trip away and want remote access.

23 responses so far ↓

  • Links Of Interest » David Pitlyuk // Apr 27, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    [...] Learn how to turn your GMail account into a free 3GB virtual hard drive. [...]

  • 2Perfect // May 6, 2007 at 6:23 am

    Is this hard drive only accessible to the account owner, or is it possible to use it as “web host” to upload images and such?

  • David Bradley // May 6, 2007 at 9:10 am

    2Perfect, I’ve not looked into the sharing aspect., but the only way to do what you suggest would be to hand out your username and password to people with whom you wanted to share the files. Not exactly a secure operation.

  • 2Perfect // May 7, 2007 at 5:40 am

    I see. That wouldn’t be good then. Unless a separate public account is created specifically for that group of people to access files, although it would still be much more of a hassle than just opening up multiple free web-hosting accounts and hotlinking ^_^

    thanks for the help anyway!

  • dani // May 21, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    You don’t need to download it from the email client :) there are special file sharing programs that can use emails for storing files.
    works fast as hell, you’ll be surprised.

  • David Bradley // May 21, 2007 at 9:02 pm

    Perhaps you could elaborate Dani…

  • Very // May 23, 2007 at 11:27 am

    You can now send and receive 20Mb attachments between GMail accounts, as opposed to the previous 10Mb limit.

  • Bob // Jun 28, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    Just read in a slashdot comment that this use of gmail is against the T&Cs (not sure for how long this has been the case)

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43692

  • David Bradley // Jun 28, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    Thanks for the alert Bob. I just scanned the terms of use and cannot see any specific mention that this usage of a GMail account is not allowed. As I said, in the original post potential users of this system should be cautious just in case and double check with Google if they are at all worried about using their account as a virtual drive. If I were being precautionary I’d suggest not using your main GMail account for this purpose. If I were being double precautionary, I’d suggest not using GMail in this way at all, at least not until Google tells you it’s okay to do so. I am surprised they have not yet created a standalone virtual drive/storage application yet, they seem to have covered most everything else already. More to the point, why would anyone actually want to use GMail beta as a virtual hard drive? USB drives are so cheap, anyone can afford to carry one in their pocket and there is no chance of it being dropped by a company that only lets its users have access to beta software!

  • Bob // Jun 29, 2007 at 10:45 am

    good point, I’d forgotten that gmail was still in beta after all these years…

    The terms of use section 5 does seem to prohibit use of automated agents, but then lots of desktop mailbox alert apps (including the Google one) would be banned?

  • David Bradley // Jun 29, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    Yep, they allow pop3 downloads, that could be done automatically could it not, therefore that would be excluded from allowable uses, but they encourage you to do that if you want, so there are definitely conflicts in their T&Cs. To be honest, I doubt they really care just as long as you’re clicking on their ads and making them money.

  • David Bradley // Aug 10, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    News just in, some Google Mail users are reporting 9Gb space on their accounts, according to Mashable. This is great news for those worried about filling their quota and anyone who wants a simple email based method of storing files.

  • David Bradley // Aug 20, 2007 at 6:45 pm

    The day of reckoning for those who use virtual drive software and plugins with their Google Mail account. According to Mashable, Google is launching a paid-for file storage service:

    The new storage service brings together your storage usage from Gmail and Picasa Web Albums, allowing you to upgrade for a fee. The fees are as follows, with payments made via Google Checkout:

    -6 GB ($20.00 per year)

    -25 GB ($75.00 per year)

    -100 GB ($250.00 per year)

    -250 GB ($500.00 per year)

  • David Bradley // Oct 12, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    M$ just announced that they are doubling the capacity of Windows Skydrive to 1 Gb, but this is a mere fraction of the capacity available to GDrive users and will be an even smaller fraction once Google upgrades their system to 4 Gb in the next few weeks and then 6 Gb in January 2008. At what point they will officially support a GDrive system, I don’t know, so whatever you do, don’t rely on GMail as a backup for critical files.

  • David Bradley // Nov 27, 2007 at 9:10 am

    I’m up to 5263.332358 megabytes of space on GMail now? What about you? What’s your significant figure?

  • Wogan May // Jan 18, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    I read the Mashable article. Yep – Google is moving towards the GDrive.

    The project was codenamed “Platypus”. The idea is to create an online service that gives you several GB of storage. Then to give you a client that you can download to manage files on that account.

    Add Picasa, Gmail, Google Docs, Orkut, and other services to that, and you basically have your entire life online.

    Your computer becomes a local cache copy, and your Platypus/Google account – and all the documents, photos, emails and feeds it holds – becomes the Golden Master.

    It’s the next step in the evolution of networked computing :)

    ~ Wogan

    Wogan May’s last blog post..New Theme

  • David Bradley // Jan 18, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    Wogan, yes, we’re basically heading towards the internet version of the old mainframe terminal-based systems of yesteryear. I’m not really sure I’d entrust all my docs and data to a remote server though. Would you?

  • Dan // Jan 20, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Hell I would. Here I back up my families’ and my own data across all our machines in different locations (“lots of copies keeps stuff safe”), but really few people do that. Most have their data on one computer — vulnerable to fire, theft, accidental damage, simple mechanical failure, you name it.

    By comparison a remote server adminstered by Google will have *lots* of back-up systems covering it. I’d say that’s a lot safer.

  • David Bradley // Jan 20, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Dan, point taken. What I was getting at though, is would you entrust private data to a remote server that might at some point be hacked and its guts spilled. Just look at how much data the UK government is loosing these days. What I’d do is backup to an external hard drive (tapes even!) and lock them in a safe at a relative house, or somewhere similar. Of course, if it’s non-sensitive then GDrive would be fine, but I’d also use an additional virtual drive on a different server just in case too.

    db

  • David Bradley // Jan 21, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    Wordpress.com users (which could be anyone even if you have your own hosting for your WP blog) now get 3 gigabytes of free upload space (as opposed to the 50Mb they had before). It shouldn’t be too hard to create a plugin for a WP account that would operate analogously to the GDrive applet, I’m sure. Any takers?

    db

  • David Bradley // Feb 22, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Has Microsoft gazumped Google in the online storage stakes. You can now get 5Gb of storage for free with MS SkyDrive. I still wouldn’t trust it with sensitive docs, but for backing up photos it could be a boon.

    db

  • Toni Danza // Jan 24, 2010 at 7:13 pm

    ^^ SkyDrive gives you 25GB now, and it has good security too :-)

  • David Bradley // Jan 25, 2010 at 8:11 am

    @Toni Yeah, I mentioned Skydrive in a subsequent post. Not everyone wants to entrust their data to Microsoft. But, then again, we shouldn’t really be entrusting all our data to Google either…

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