10 Jan 06 HOW-TO: Use your Gmail account as a personal file server

This is a fairly simple and useful trick to score yourself a gigabyte’s worth of free online file storage. If you already have a Gmail account, you can use it as a central file server that is accessible from anywhere you can access Gmail. If you don’t have a Gmail account… read on. We’re going to install a shell extension that will allow you to mount your Gmail account as a virtual drive on your desktop, so you can perform basic file manipulation operations without having to go through the web-based interface. Drag and drop, batch copy, create folders and delete files as you normally would in Windows Explorer, and be able to access your virtual drive from virtually anywhere.

There are some limitations and caveats associated with this how-to: Gmail doesn’t support files larger than 10MB, so you won’t be able to store large movie files or anything, but you wouldn’t be doing that anyway ‘cuz it’s illegal, right? Also, the Gmail drive shell extension only functions under Windows XP, but you’ll be able to access and download any of your files via any operating system and browser combination supported by Gmail.

Be advised that this trick is completely unsupported by the Google folk and so may cease functioning at any time — particularly following upgrades to the Gmail service. As far as we know this isn’t illegal (we actually read the EULA for you — that’s love, people), but we can’t guarantee Google won’t go all RIAA on us and crack down on this app, either, so use at your own risk.

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