How to Use Gmail as an Online Hard Drive

One of the great things about Google mail, or Gmail for short, is the sheer amount of space they offer, at more than 2 gigabytes of storage for file attachments. This is more than enough space for regular email attachments. Did you know that you could use Gmail as a virtual, online hard drive? Think of all the stuff you could save with that extra file storage!

Much like a regular hard drive, you will be able to create folders, and copy, save or retrieve them from the Gmail drive. What's more, you will be able to access your files from anywhere that you can access your Gmail account!

The Gmail Drive is a free virtual drive application that creates a virtual file-system in Windows Explorer, enabling you to use Gmail as an online hard drive. It literally creates an additional drive for your PC, under your My Computer folder. You will then be able to save, delete and retrieve files directly from your Windows Explorer.

The files you save in your Gmail drive are physically stored on your Gmail account as email attachments. A new file in the Gmail drive will generate an email and post it to your Gmail account, with the file as an attachment. The file name and file size will be in the subject line.

This tutorial will walk you step-by-step trough the process of setting up your Gmail account as an online hard drive.

How to Create and Use a Gmail Hard Drive
To create a virtual Gmail hard drive, you will need to create a file extension linking directly to your Gmail account. Currently, shell extensions only provide approximately 10 megabytes of file storage linking to your Gmail account.

Step #1 Create a Google Account
Before you install the Gmail hard drive, you need to first create a Google account if you haven't created one yet.
*Simply go to www.gmail.com and click Sign up for Gmail near the bottom of the page.
*Enter the requested information such as first name, last name, logon name, password, and security question.
*Click I accept. Create my account.

With your Gmail account created, you can link the account to Windows Explorer or My Computer.

Step #2 Link the Account to Windows Explorer or My Computer
*Logon to your Gmail account.
*Click the Create a Filter button next to the Search the Web button.
*In the dialog box that appears, type "GMAILFS" in the Subject field.
*Click Next Step when you are done.
*Checkmark the Skip the Inbox (Archive it) option and
*Click Create Filter.

Now your Gmail account is ready to be linked to your computer.

Step #3 Link your Gmail Account to Your Computer
*Download the shell extension from http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm.
*If the file is in .zip format, extract the files.
*Once extracted, double-click the setup.exe file to install the program.
*Follow the step-by-step installation instructions.

Once you have installed the software, you can now view the Gmail hard drive by going to My Computer. You can now store files by copy and pasting or right-clicking the desired file and going to Send to and clicking on Gmail drive.

ROAMDRIVE
The Gmail Drive is not the only virtual drive application for linking your Gmail account to your computer. RoamDrive is another very useful application that can be used for using your Gmail account as an online hard drive. Most importantly, RoamDrive allows you to store more than the standard 10 megabytes by breaking larger files into smaller pieces.

Once you created a Gmail account,
*Logon to your Gmail account and click the Create a Filter button next to the Search the Web button.
*In the dialog box that appears, type "ROAMDRIVE" in the Subject field.
*Click Next Step when you are done.
*Checkmark the Skip the Inbox (Archive it) option and
*Click Create Filter.

Now you need to download RoamDrive from http://www.roamdrive.com. Run the setup.exe program the exact same way you ran Gmail Drive.

Once RoamDrive is installed, you can use your Gmail account to store files larger than 10 megabytes.

Please be advised that these applications have been developed independently from Google, and as such, any Google upgrades may interfere with their functioning, so take that risk into account.