Thread: Using GMAIL as an Online Hard Drive

possibly found a better tool for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1593

Originally Posted by voltor

Can you store an unlimited amount of stuff?
Why will they ban you.

They will ban u cause they do not give u consent to do this with gmail and its not an official google product. If u are gonna use this i suggest creating an extra gmail account just for the sole purpose of using it for the gmail drive. If not and u use it with your primary account google will ban u eventually and your email account will be gone.

Hi all,

I just wanted to point out some things. First of all, no your account will not be banned. All of the files uploaded on your GMAIL drive are actually attachments to emails or even text-encoded binary email messages (depending on what implementation of GDrive you use).

Google gives you 7 GB and that's it. You can store whatever you want in there. They don't care. By using GMail drive you are not "hacking" Google. You are just using their infrastructure in a different kind of way.

Second, no you can not seed from it. Even though you use GMAIL drive as a regular drive from your windows application, there are different things going on in the background than when you use your regular C drive. When you drag files, or copy them, your actions are translated to web actions. So, the Gmail drive acts as a user, browsing the web for you, download and uploading attachments and so forth. This means, that GDrive uses your username & password to create a session and then uses that session to access your files. Your files are not publicly accessible (without that session id that is) and thus they can't be accessed directly by trackers and users.

Third and last, for linux users you can use GMailFS which does the same thing (mounts GMail as a hard disk to a specified directory).

Gmail Filesystem - GmailFS

Best Regards
nik

to my knoledge you can only send 25 mb files and not larger. So if you got 50 mb you need to split it into two times 25 with winrar. can anyone confirm this?

Originally Posted by nik

Hi all,

I just wanted to point out some things. First of all, no your account will not be banned. All of the files uploaded on your GMAIL drive are actually attachments to emails or even text-encoded binary email messages (depending on what implementation of GDrive you use).

Google gives you 7 GB and that's it. You can store whatever you want in there. They don't care. By using GMail drive you are not "hacking" Google. You are just using their infrastructure in a different kind of way.

Second, no you can not seed from it. Even though you use GMAIL drive as a regular drive from your windows application, there are different things going on in the background than when you use your regular C drive. When you drag files, or copy them, your actions are translated to web actions. So, the Gmail drive acts as a user, browsing the web for you, download and uploading attachments and so forth. This means, that GDrive uses your username & password to create a session and then uses that session to access your files. Your files are not publicly accessible (without that session id that is) and thus they can't be accessed directly by trackers and users.

Third and last, for linux users you can use GMailFS which does the same thing (mounts GMail as a hard disk to a specified directory).

Gmail Filesystem - GmailFS

Best Regards
nik

7 GB ? quite in handy mate .. and i also doubted that we can't seed from it as the trackers won't be able to get hand on it and utorrent :D .. i was just worried that to use it or not but now i will without any doubt use it !!

Originally Posted by nik

Hi all,
I just wanted to point out some things. First of all, no your account will not be banned.

Nobody said anything about hacking your gmail account and using this can and will get u banned. It is all over the web stating this and is right in there TOS. I dont know where u got this idea Google dont care. Here is just one link and part of there TOS:

Why has my Gmail account been locked?

If we detect abnormal usage that may indicate that your account has been compromised, we may temporarily disable access.

Abnormal usage includes, but is not limited to:

* Receiving, deleting, or POPing out large amounts of mail in a short period of time.
* Sending mail to a large number of recipients in a short period of time.
* Using 3rd party file-sharing or storing software in your account.
* Logging in from multiple locations in a short period of time.
* Using your account for purposes other than email.

If you're using POP to retrieve your messages from Gmail and your account has been locked, please read I enabled POP access, and now I'm locked out of my Gmail account.

GMail Drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well in any case i still use my email accounts for storage by emailing my schoolwork and other stuff to my email that i dont share with others. i have many files and with the folder options i have great organization. and i am able to break any file up with winrar or similar products so i really dont see the need to go through all that just to store file when i can store them anyway my emailing myself the thingsa i want to save.

Thanx to the author for trying but unfortunately i think this idea has become "fail" but dont give up. keep searching for ideas we and other communities can use. i fail all the time but i nevewr give up.

Rep add for effort.

Doesn't emailing yourself the file come with limitations on the type of file you can email?
Doesn't a gmail account sync no matter where you use it from?
Just create a draft, add the attachment and save the draft.

Anyway, I used to use the gspace extension. I know a lot of people that did, or do use it, and I've never personally known anyone that's had their account disabled... It could happen though.

It's a nice trick, though I see only one purpose for this: to easily transport small files. Let's say you need to take documents with you somewhere but don't have access to or do not wish to use physical media like a USB stick, CD, etc... this would come in handy provided you have access to Internet at the destination; but only if you do this frequently, otherwise you could just manually attach your small files to emails.

Planning on using this for anything else will result in disappointment, even though GMail does allow you to store up to 7GB of email in your account there is the problem of whether or not it is feasible. Download and upload speed is a seriously limiting factor so it cannot be used as a regular drive would speed-wise and definitely not access-wise as it's just a pretty way of managing attachments.

I agree with Tru_ninja when it comes to this being a partial failure idea as most people probably wouldn't need it but for those who do it can be invaluable and save lots of time (for taking small files places). Personally, I needed something like this so thank you.

However, if I am completely not seeing some other use for this then my apologies and please share it. Backing stuff up doesn't count though, seeing as how physical media can hold a lot more storage much faster and is available even when an Internet connection is not.