GMAIL DRIVE

GMAIL DRIVE

GMail Drive is a third party windows shell extension which allows one to map the storage space allocated for a gmail account on to a virtual drive that is mounted on the user's computer.

As it is clear from its name, in order to create this one has to have a gmail account.

The next step is to install the shell extension which will create this virtual drive. The Virtual Drive will appear in the user's My Computer. This new drive behaves like any other hard disk drive in one's computer and has the normal functionalities associated with the windows explorer(drag n drop, cut, copy, paste etc., the only difference being one needs to log on to the gmail account to see the contents of the directory. The Gmail Drive scans the gmail account once in a while and rebuilds the directory structures, if new files/folders are found in the account.

The GMail Drive works on top of the GMail File System, which is behind the google's mail service.
When a new file is added to the drive, the file is in turn uploaded to the google's storage through the Gmail Drive. A new mail is generated in which the uploaded file appears as an attachment. The file size limitation which is generally associated with a gmail account also apply to this too.

Though it seems a brilliant idea to use the storage space of google for our personal use, google's terms of conditions doesnt allow one to use this. The program policies do not ban the use of these, any immoderate use of Gmail's storage space may invite temporary suspension of the account.

One has to note that if there is a change in the GMAIL FileSystem, the whole idea of GMAIL Drive, in its present form, may be useless and also that the GMAIL Drive doesnt support the Google Apps account.

There are similar packages from other companies like Microsoft and AOL.

The GMAIL Drive shell extension can be found here. http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

Please use the GMAIL Drive at your own risk. It is an experimental package and NOT offered by Google as one of their services.