GMail Drive

PB · Post by PB » Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:19 pm

Hi all, I just found this handy freeware app:

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

This is for GMail users and it lets you use your GMail account as a 1 GB virtual
hard drive! I just installed it and tried it out and it works great. A new drive
called "GMail Drive" appears under "My Computer" and you can drag-n-drop
files into and out of it at any time. It's probably a good idea to encrypt any
files that you put into it -- just in case, for privacy's sake. Performance is
good with my 256k ADSL account but I don't know how useful it'd be for 56k
dialup modem users? Anyway, take a look -- I think it's an excellent way to
have off-site backups of your PureBasic source codes.

Tommeh · Post by **Tommeh** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:21 pm

Yeah this has been out quiet a while now, but i think gmail have good plans to stop it :roll:

Dreglor · Post by **Dreglor** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 10:50 pm

now theres a intresting hack ...

Jimbo_H · Post by **Jimbo_H** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 11:00 pm

If you want a nice free online storage area, you could do worse than streamload.com

With their free plan, you get 10Gb storage, a very nice web based frontend and they also have a small windows app that you can just drop files onto to upload automatically.

The only restrictions I can see with it is that you can't download more than 1.2Gb per year which works out to 100Mb per month. There is a way of sharing files via a URL that doesn't affect this quota, but I haven't tried it yet.

I signed up last month and have had no problems. It's great and best of all, free

No, I'm not working for them!!

Jim

PB · Post by PB » Sun Feb 13, 2005 1:30 am

> i think gmail have good plans to stop it

For putting files there it's just the same as sending an e-mail to your GMail
account -- so they can't stop that at all. For getting files off there all they
can do is stop "automated" logins, but the GMail Drive author could always
just recode his app to get around it. I suppose they could threaten to sue
the author, which might make him stop.

I'll have a look at Streamload.com and see how that fares. Thanks Jimbo!

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 1:44 pm

Gmail project y charming.

But i don't like the idea of installing additional software everywhere every pc where is wanted to use as web-data-space

PB · Post by PB » Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:56 pm

> i don't like the idea of installing additional software everywhere every pc
> where is wanted to use as web-data-space

I don't think it installs much... it's only a 120k zip file, but of course that can
expand after actual installation. To me, it's worth it because I can right-click
any file and select "Send to GMail Drive" to auto-upload it to my GMail account;
as simple as that, no password prompt or anything. A simple way to quickly
and safely store my data in another location away from my home.

Post by **Fred** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:10 pm

Cool app, it's available on linux too for those interested (as a full filesystem like ext2 !)

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:47 pm

The app is a good idea.
But could be better if the web-space was available for any person who just go to a given url, instead installing app.

If Microsoft would read this surely they would be the "first" doing it. As ever.

Post by **Fred** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:40 pm

On windows there is a native support for the WebDAV protocol which is rawly what you want to do: http://itsinfo.tamu.edu/workshops/hando ... ow2000.htm

naw · Post by **naw** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 1:33 pm

But they already have - its been in the apps for years...

Go to any M$ Application (and probably most non-M$ apps) and open a file.

specify the file name as (obviously replace names as necessary):

http://www.mysite.com/myfile.ext

-or-

ftp://ftp.myserver.com

and it'll ask you for a User Name & Password - it's the same when you come to save your file.

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:16 pm

By the way, i've got a @gmail.com mailbox.
It works great!

TerryHough · Post by **TerryHough** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 6:56 pm

See viewtopic.php?t=9471 for a
couple of routines by Hi-Toro that are useful with this type of space.

I use an expanded version of those routines to store and retrieve files
from space provided by my ISP daily. This space is provided by the ISP
as part of the contract. This code allows me to treat the space as if it
were physically located on my local area network.

freedimension · Post by **freedimension** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 3:39 pm

I'm using GDrive as Backup-Server since February 2nd and it works like a charm. The only thing I wish it would implement, is the choice of prefix to identify a file in the gmail storage. That way, google couldn't possibly do anything against this, i.e. not block emails with that specific prefix that is used currently.

But please, don't forget to zip and password-protect your souce-codes before uploading to GMail

If even the filenames are sensible, you have to put a zip inside another one.