How To: Upload and Store Files in Your GMail Account

There is a nice hack out there which you can use on your GMail account to store files [such as mp3, power point, PDFs, ZIP etc]. The only limitation is that you can not upload a file larger than 10Megs in size and also that you will not see a classic windows explorer kind of interface for the uploaded files inside GMail since all the files that you upload are stored as email attachments. However, after installing a shell extension in your system, you can access all the uploaded files in the same way you access file and folders in other system drives [such as a USB drive].

Sounds interesting? Let’s first begin with the installation.

Step# 1 - Download and install the GMail Drive Shell Extension from [Softpedia] or check the [Author's site] for more download locations. You may have to restart your system for the changes to take effect.

Step# 2 - After reboot, double click “My Computer“, and check to see if ‘GMail Drive‘ shows up. If you see the drive, it means that your installation was successful. If not, please re-install the shell extension and reboot the system.

Step# 3 - To login and start uploading files to your GMail account, double click on ‘GMail Drive’ in ‘My Computer’ and login to your GMail account. [On a shared computer do not set auto-login]. You can right click and select ‘Login As’ to login as a different User.

Step# 4 - Post login, you will see an empty drive. To create a new folder, right click and select New->Folder. Double click on the folder and then either create a subfolder or just ‘Copy-Paste’ or ‘Drag & Drop’ a file into it. That’s it! You have discovered a new way of using GMail, to store your files. That’s why I love GMail.

Please note that, an uploaded file/folder has a prefix of GMAILFS when you see them in GMail. I recommend that you create a label called ‘MyFiles’ and label all such emails [uploaded files in fact] so that you do not confuse them with other emails.

To check the current usage of your GMail drive, right click on the driver letter and select properties.

Now that you know how to use your 2GB of storage in GMail to store your important files, go ahead and upload all those important certificates, mp3s, spredsheets, documents, PDFs etc.

Happy Uploading!