Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Google offer a very healthy 7372 MB of storage to it’s GMail users.  Previously i’ve covered how to use Windows SkyDrive to your advantage.  This time it’s Googles turn.

This guide will show you how to add your GMail account to Windows Explorer, thus enabling a drag & drop system for you to use you GMail account as additional storage on your computer.  Even if you don’t use GMail as an email provider nobody can turn down an extra 8GB of storage, can you?

Be aware that support for this tool may suspend at any time if Google decides to block its use.

To get started, download the latest version of GMail Drive from www.viksoe.dk/gmail/ and install it.

You’ll notice that it’s dropped an addition to your ‘Computer’ in Explorer.

Right click the GMail Drive in Computer an select Login As…

Enter your vital statistics and hit OK

You may get a window saying “enumerating folder”.  Try not to disturb Explorer or this window whilst it’s working.

Once your in, it’s a simple case of dragging and dropping your documents, pictures, music into the GMail Drive.

It’ll instantly sync your GMail Drive with your online GMail account, where you can view the item, download, or view as a Google Document.

If you don’t use GMail as your primary email handler, it’s worth setting GMail up to forward any mail you do get to your primary email address, also set GMail to archive the forwarded email.

I have tested this on Windows Vista 32bit and Windows 7 32bit.  On both systems, GMail Drive works flawlessly.