Use Gmail Like A Shared Hard Drive

Have you ever wanted to share files between home and office computers, or with members of your team who are not all in the same place all the time? There is a great way to do this easily, and it's FREE. Gmail Drive creates a "virtual drive" that uses a Gmail account for storage. Google keeps expanding how much free storage they give to Gmail account holders, and right now they offer 7 GB free – that’s a LOT of data.

Here's how to set this up:

1. Create a free Gmail account at www.gmail.com. Even if you already have a Gmail account, I recommend creating a second free account just to use for storage. Especially since you'll have to give the username and password to whoever you want to give access to your files.



2. Download the Gmail Drive zip file from here and then open it and double-click the setup.exe file to install. You’ll know it worked if you go to My Computer and see a system folder called "Gmail Drive".



3. Double-click on the Gmail Drive folder and enter the username and password for the account you created in Step 1. Check the "Auto Login" box if you want your Gmail drive to be available automatically. Click the OK button to login and show the contents of your Gmail drive.

Just repeat steps 2 and 3 on any computer where you need to access your shared files, or give the information to a friend or colleague with whom you'd like to share data. To put files into your Gmail drive, just "drag and drop" them, or copy and paste them to the drive like you would do with any drive. It's that easy.