GMail Drive Shell Extension

krmpradeep writes "GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium. GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to."

Comments

For Linux too!

[x4A6D74]

http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-files ystem/gmail-filesystem.html

Haven't tried it yet; I keep meaning to but school keeps getting in the way.

Re:For Linux too!

[Hobadee]

I tried it. I added it to /etc/fstab (not automounting). I never use it. Why? Simple. It takes to flipping long. When I was all excited and playing around with it, I stuck a text file that said "Hello World" on it. I did an "ls". 30 seconds later I got the response from "ls". I then catted the file. Again, at least 30 seconds before it came back with anything. It is incredibly horribly slow - and this was with a recent version. (1-2 weeks ago)

I don't see how this is "news" at all - this has been around pretty much since Gmail went beta.

Nice, but doomed

[BristolCream]

This won't last long. One of the reaosns Google and others can offer so much space is that they're confident that it won't be used.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[polecat_redux]

This won't last long.

They may have tolerated the concept if it had remained within the realm of Linux, but now that the Windows floodgates are open, I suspect that they will put an end to this very quickly.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[Sneeper]

Actually Gmail *does* have a file size limit to incoming e-mails. As one person on the GMAIL Drive Forums states:

It appears that Google has put a file size limit on "attachments". I've installed GMail Drive and tried a couple quick uploads. One was a tar.bz2 file that weighs in at 23MB. After dragging the file over to the GMail Drive window, it worked for a while then returned an error message stating that "File is too big. GMail does currently not support files larger than 10 Mb."

The response confirms:

Great point Steve. GMail does have an attachment size limit which does limit the usefulness of these file system extensions. One solution would be to handle file splitting in the tool.

I don't have a gmail account, but anyone who does should be able to easily confirm this.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[wibs]

yup, 10MB max attachment size. the help page for attachments also mentions that the encoding is so bloated that attachments of 6MB might hit the size limit, too (alright, they didn't use the word "bloated" but it seems a little absurd to me).

Re:Nice, but doomed

[PayPaI]

No, it's not really absurd. Base-64 encoding increases file size by something like 3/2. If you do not use base-64 encoding, then your files may become corrupted in transit.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[eMartin]

They might have even tolerrated the few Windows users that would actually use it, but now that the Slashdot floodgates are open...

Re:Nice, but doomed

[Alioth]

It'll last plenty of time.

It's impractical to use much of this storage unless you have an OC-45 to hand. The vast majority of people have internet connections with pathetic upstream bandwidth (128K, 256K - occasionally 512K - and very rarely more than that). It'll be fabulous for storing small files you want easy access to from anywhere, but pretty useless for storing large files or large quantities of small files simply due to the time it'll take to upload/download the files.

Re:Nice, but doomed

[polecat_redux]

people tend to view OS bashing as flamebait around here, especially when it really isn't factual or called for.)

I wasn't bashing Linux (I use it myself). In fact, I was simply pointing out that far less people use Linux (in a home-user context) than Windows - something that is entirely factual. Linux does not possess anywhere near the market share of Windows. This is the reason usage of that app would be more widespread... plain and simply, more exposure.

Huh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been meaning to impliment something like this in OS X, but GmailFS uses FUSE, which is Linux only. I wonder how he did this for Windows.

Works as advertised

[erick99]

Jeeze, pretty amazing. Downloaded the filed, installed it, and was transferring files in less than 60 seconds. No kidding! Files transfer faster than when I email the same sized attachment which is pretty nice. When you click/double-click on the drive it opens like any other drive/folder window and you see the files that are stored there. A free gig of off-site storage. I haven't tried to transfer something bigger than the 10MB attachment limit yet, but I will give it a shot. A great app!

Re:Works as advertised

[erick99]

10MB limit applies. Oh well, still very cool.

It Works

[Facekhan]

It definitely works, but will probably be made not to work as soon as Google hears of it and you know they read /.

Still its a cool idea and honestly I would pay a very small fee (as in no more than $2/month) to have a 1GB online drive that was dependable. But I always have my little Sandisk MiniCruzer 512MB so its not like I really need it.

Re:It Works

[killbill!]

GMX.net has had 1GB (file storage & e-mail) over WebDAV for free for a while now.
If you have a German or Austrian bank account, you can bump that to 5GB for 3 EUR a month or 10GB for 5 EUR a month.

Btw the features of their email service just flat out rock. I'm quite sure they are unmatched worldwide. ('been a customer since 98 now ;))

(I knew all those years learning German in high school weren't a waste of time ;p... Now then, how about you guys give us back the English version you had earlier?)

Cool hack...

[mcrbids]

But would you trust it? Would you REALLY want to use a hack on top of something that somebody else provided for free for your mission-critical data?

Neither did I. What I don't get is the advantage. I mean, using no-ip.com and your average DSL account, you can turn your home computer into an "online storage" at a cost of around around $0.50 per gigabyte.

Wow. Those google guys are sure being nice! I mean, you gotta love these people, right?

For a community that seems to love google, this sure seems like a stupid, wasteful, and mean thing to do.

I can see it now...

[MajorG17]

Just wait until someone invites themself for 120 GMail addresses... then 1000... then starts SHARING terabytes of copyrighted data... eah, this may not last long.

I'm amused.

[Awptimus Prime]

I'm having a great time reading this thread. The same people who say things like "I would never run IE" are coming out and acting thrilled about this. What about the requirement of having IE to run this? I guess it is okay when it has something to do with Gmail. Hmmmm.

Selective zealotry at its worse.

Don't be evil

[philipkd]

okay, so how does google respond to this.

I think they just have to throw their hands up and go, okay, fine 1GB virtual drive for ppl, how to best make money off of it?

Could they analyze your files and serve ads related to it? If you put up an mp3, could they upsell albums related to it?

If you upload a text document describing to your girlfriend your favorite lingerie, could they flash an adsense for Victoria's Secret?

If you have an excel spread sheet describing mission-critical CRMs, could they analyze those and start throwing ads related to that?

Abusing Google?

[adolfojp]

GMail is an excellent web mail service. In fact, it is the best one that I have ever used. They pay for the service and make a profit by pasting ads on their webmail site.

If we use GMail in this fashion, not only are we abusing their trust but also dooming the service and perhaps destroying it.


Cheers,

Adolfo

Re:Abusing Google?

[Illserve]

You'll care if they start charging you for it.

Re:What about the ToS?

[julesh]

Google don't take full rights to your e-mail. You're thinking of hotmail.

For Slashdot Too!

[goombah99]

Slashdot-Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Slashdot login, allowing you to use Slashdot as a storage medium. Slashdot-Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Slashdot account using a combination of the read-write Journal pages and the unlimited write-once comment fields. Slashdot-drive enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Slashdot account directly from inside Windows Explorer. Slashdot-Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

It offers high availability, and unlimited amounts of file storage.

Slashdot-drive uses hundreds of slash-dot logins mappens in a raid-0/raid-1 fashion to assure low latency and redundancy in case you are discovered. In the event an account is locked or deleted, SLASHDOT drive automaticaly rebuilds lost raid partiions in new accounts.

Data is stored in ascii-mapping or using the optional stealth-mode which decreaces storage density but improves undetectability by using phrases taken from other posts to encode a data stream,

The downside is that it essentially destroys a useful public good by filling its pages with gibberish and causing OSDN to bear unacceptable server costs. But who cares becaue you are an arrogant prick

Re:For Slashdot Too!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The downside is that it essentially destroys a useful public good by filling its pages with gibberish"

And this makes a difference how exactly?

(take this post I've just made for an example)

Re:For Slashdot Too!

[Anonymous Coward]

> GMail isn't a "public good", it's a marketing
> gimmick created by a company trying to get
> market share.

Tell that to the tens of thousands of people who already depend on gMail as their primary email. What are they called again? Oh yes, the "public." And would you say they regard a huge free email account as something "bad" or something "good"?

There are so many companies who do bad things right and left, and that deserve to get kicked in the teeth. Google continually offers innovative projects that vastly improve the public good; why spend energy kicking them in the teeth, too?

On another matter, the original post about a Slashdot drive was the funniest and most insightful post I've read here in months.

Re:Web Server

[hobo2k]

Those crazy guys at google have already done the work for you! Your gmail network drive can be accessed through the web at gmail.google.com!!

Nice hack, but you get what you pay for!

[siliconjunkie]

This is a really cool hack, and has a great "Gee whiz look what I did" value to it. But that's about it. I don't think that it would be practical to start actually using this cool little hack due to the fact that no matter how much you may disagree with the GMail terms of use, they still reserve the right to either

A) make it so that this hack no longer works (wouldn't be too hard, in fact it will probably break often as GMail is still in beta and under heavy development if you havent noticed)

or,

B) simply close your account, no questions asked (don't think that people using this hack wont be EASY to detect to to a profoundly different traffic fingerprint in their logfiles for the GmailFS using accounts).

I'm not saying you're "bad" or "taking advantage of google" if you use this software per se, what I'm saying is, don't complain when the Gmail account you've filled to the brim with Bangbus videos get's abruptly cancelled.

My suggestion, for what it's worth, would be: enjoy this for what it is: a cool, neat-o, nifty hack. Period.

others already offer this without hack

[F�an�ro]

Here in Germany we have a free mail provider (GMX) that offers 1 GB (since a few months), for mails AND for files, and you can access them as a file system(link to German site) using the open WebDAV protocol from linux, windows or mac, so no ugly hacks are neccesary. (Konqueror can do that out-of-the-box, I think)

Also offers free pop and smtp, mail forwarding, and configurable filters

Interface is in German only, and you have to give them an existing German, Austrian or Swiss postal address when you sign up. (but those could theoretically be found on the net.)

Actually,

[acariquara]

I believe most files posted would be modded at least +3, Insightful...