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Author Topic: GMail Drive in My Computer  (Read 13437 times)

cmpm

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GMail Drive in My Computer
« on: July 21, 2007, 05:39 PM »

Wordzilla

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2007, 11:53 PM »
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.

I know it's not a big deal and many ppl (imo) are using such tools, but there's still debate on its compliance with Google Gmail Program Use Policy.

One of the stated No-nos:
"Modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Gmail Service;
Reformat or frame any portion of the web pages that are part of the Gmail Service."

Some real risks of using it (IMO):

1. Google may block the program altogether someday.

2. Google may disable your account.

3. When Google makes changes to Gmail, the program may break and trap your files inside your gmail account (at least temporarily).

app103

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2007, 12:33 AM »
Anybody with either an AOL or AIM account (you can get both for free) can have a nice 5 gig XDrive account for free.

With the XDrive Desktop application, you can have it show in Explorer as either your X, Y, or Z drive.

SNAG-0047.pngGMail Drive in My Computer

That's more space than GMail gives you, and it's meant for this purpose. It's not a hack that violates some terms of use policy like the Gmail thing does.

You can also share files with others if they are also XDrive users. And there is no time limit on the files, like with YouSendIt...or file size restrictions. You can upload up to the max your XDrive account allows, which is 5 gigs on a free account, 50 gigs on a paid account.

And the XDrive Desktop program can be set to do automatic backups of whatever files you want, on a schedule.

cmpm

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2007, 06:01 AM »
Wordzilla, hmmm...yeah got the same feedback about the firefox extension also. It's called G-Space.
I think if you limit your use of it, that may be ok, I don't know.

app103, I'll check those things out, having 5 gigs of web space is just enough for a song, well some songs are a bit bigger, but I have been known to post songs in a conversation on a few forums.

Thanks for the input, both of ya.

TucknDar

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2007, 06:18 AM »
having 5 gigs of web space is just enough for a song, well some songs are a bit bigger, but I have been known to post songs in a conversation on a few forums.
Eh? songs bigger than 5 gigs?

cmpm

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2007, 06:46 AM »
Hey! Xdrive is cool!
Didn't take long to get it either.
Thanks app!

And I must have been thinkin mb for songs.
Yeah 5 gigs is plenty, TucknDar.

Curt

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #6 on: July 22, 2007, 07:48 AM »
Anybody with either an AOL or AIM account (you can get both for free) can have a nice 5 gig XDrive account for free.

U.S. citizens only   :(

app103

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #7 on: July 22, 2007, 07:53 AM »
I know of people that are not US citizens that have managed to get an AIM account (there is no country restrictions on that)...and then an XDrive account with their AIM email address.

Curt

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #8 on: July 22, 2007, 12:52 PM »
Yes, I just did that too  :up:

- only; Xdrive or AIM introduced new errors to my PC...   

---

There are too many AIMers in the world!!
- so now I am me2curt4u    :D
« Last Edit: July 22, 2007, 12:56 PM by Curt »

app103

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #9 on: July 22, 2007, 01:29 PM »
You do not have to download and install AIM to have an XDrive account. You can just make the screen name and get the free AIM email address to use for it.

-----

The enormous number of people that are AOL, AIM, or Netscape Mail users has forced those that wish to have an account to exercise the creative part of their brain, at least once...to think up a screen name (something that can be about as hard as coming up with a good domain name).

Or you can just bang on your keyboard and memorize whatever text comes up.

Personally, I hate ones with numbers...means I wasn't creative enough. (app103 is when I am not in a creative mood  :-[)

I have a total of 8 AOL/AIM screen names...only 1 of them has numbers...and they all make some sort of sense, without resorting to any type of '1337 sp33k'


cmpm

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #10 on: July 22, 2007, 01:44 PM »
The admin alerts will go to the aol email account unless you change it in the profile. So I changed mine to my gmail but still found the aol email page to log into and saved it as a bookmark.

Curt

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #11 on: July 22, 2007, 04:03 PM »
This AIM is a mystery to me! Do all AIM users really accept having this stupid   tall   add poluted   window   on the side of the desktop?? Why on earth will AIM not offer to start hidden   minimized to systray?? Do they offer some 'pro' version which will fix this?

---

The plugin Gmail Notifier is a little stupid: It will offfer to start with Windows, but when it does, it will ask you first to click OK - with no option to auto-login in the future. Some feature!

Edit: Its not quite the same, but to my liking Skype is way ahead of both AIM and Gmail
- when it comes to being userfriendly.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2007, 04:07 PM by Curt »

cmpm

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #12 on: July 22, 2007, 05:33 PM »
You can uninstall AIM and still have the XDrive.
Either use the XDrive Desktop or the website.
I like the website. Though the Desktop thingy is fun to play with.

http://www.xdrive.com/downloads/

http://plus.xdrive.c...her?action=OpenIndex

And I agree Skype is the best, wish they would have integrated it with GMail.

justice

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #13 on: July 23, 2007, 04:30 AM »
I don't know why Xdrive needs 22.4 MB of ram to sit in my system tray and map a network drive over SSL.  there's an aolsoftware.exe running ???, xdrive, xdriveservice,xdrivetray and xdrSmb ( i take it it's an samba interface). Bit much.
However copying to and from the removable drive in explorer works fine, the context menu works like a charm, and i'm not violating any terms/cons like gdrive.

So mixed opinion so far.

Curt

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #14 on: July 23, 2007, 10:32 AM »
Though the Desktop thingy is fun to play with.

http://www.xdrive.com/downloads/

cmpm; did not this Xdrive Desktop 'thingy' ask you to click okay to login at AIM at each PC Start ?? It did at my PC, so I removed the bastard; I will not have my programs asking me silly questions... I removed AIM as well. me2curt4u will answer no more...

Edit: I was very disappointed to see that AOL (AIM) again had installed a program (some mediaplayer) on my PC without first telling me and then did not remove it at AOL (AIM) uninstall. How dare they!?
« Last Edit: July 23, 2007, 10:43 AM by Curt »

justice

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #15 on: July 23, 2007, 10:50 AM »
I don't have any of the problems you are having, although there is this aolsoftware.exe running that I think I will disallow using a local security policy, because it's not listed by autoruns but it's still running somehow.

I didn't install AIM though, it doesn't ask me anything and it didn't install a mediaplayer.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2007, 10:51 AM by justice »

Jimdoria

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #16 on: July 23, 2007, 12:30 PM »
I signed up for a system similar to XDrive called http://www.mediamax.com. Haven't used it in a long time, so I don't know if they're still open & free, but it gave you a lot of space & looked promising at the time. I don't remember them having shell integration for file management, though. As I recall they had some desktop app you could run if you didn't want to use the web interface.

Seems they're blocked by the corp firewall for some reason now, so I can't check them out at the moment. But take a look.

By the way, if you hate AIM (or Y!IM or MSNIM or any of those other bloated-size, feature-poor, vendor-specific IM clients) go to http://www.ceruleanstudios.com and check out Trillian. It lets you connect to all the chat networks (even ICQ and IRC). It's free for the basic edition, which is pretty full featured. Or if you like FOSS better, lookup Pidgin (fromerly GAIM) which does the same thing.
- Jimdoria ~@>@

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide everybody into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

cmpm

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #17 on: July 23, 2007, 02:07 PM »
Curt,

No it never installed AIM. And I went into msconfig to kill all aol stuff till I want it running. Maybe you got a mirror link that did the aim install. I don't know.

I think I'll use the web more then the desktop because logging in is faster for one.

app103

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #18 on: July 23, 2007, 03:37 PM »
I originally installed the XDrive Desktop to be able to take advantage of drag & drop in Explorer for backing up files, and to take advantage of being able to schedule automated backups with it. (I love automation!)

I have since uninstalled it because of some problems I have had with it.

Logging in for one. It takes forever and I have to attempt it multiple times until I get an error and the next time will work. It gets to about 80% where it maps the drive, then goes backwards to 60% where it's authenticating and just hangs there for awhile...then goes back to the login screen. Eventually it works and mounts the drive, but I don't feel like playing with it for a few hours trying to get it to work. (I might be having a problem with 'nick collision' from being logged into too many AOL services with too many screen names at same time from same IP)

The other problem I had with it was that it frequently causes problems with Explorer once it is running and logged in. I have trouble opening other Explorer windows not related to the x: drive if I have something transferring.

I have also had problems with transferring folders with a lot of files. It fails and then I have to do it again...and again...and again.

The web interface seems to work much better, but I have also had a problem with that. It has on at least one occasion crashed my browser, causing me to have to reboot to be able to use my browser again.

I think once I get the stuff I want backed up to it uploaded, I will just continue to use the web interface and set an alert to remind me to back up stuff to it...and remember to back up my projects to it when I am doing it to my email storage accounts. (I mail them to myself as attachments from one Gmail account to another, and CC to my aol account and store it to AOL's servers from there, too...which gives me 3 copies of everything stored off my pc's and out of my house. With XDrive it will make 4 copies.)

I still would be willing to use the XDrive Desktop, at some point in time in the future, if they can get the bugs worked out. I am not sure if/when this will happen, and there seems to be no way to report problems with it. So I don't know how aware they are of all the issues.

I supposed they only know of the ones that paid accounts are having, as those people have the right to call them on the phone and complain and report all the problems they have with the software.

justice

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #19 on: July 23, 2007, 04:46 PM »
For backing up itself you're probably better off with Mozy, $4.95 per month for unlimited storage and unobtrusive backing up in the background (and 2GB for $0). I thought Xdrive was good for moving files between home / work.

app103

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #20 on: July 23, 2007, 05:52 PM »
Now here is an interesting XDrive feature: Skip the Download

With this tool, it adds an option to the context menu in Internet Explorer that will allow you to right click a link (page, setup file, whatever) and instead of downloading the file to your pc, send it to your xdrive where you can download it later.

That could really come in handy with some things.

tomos

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #21 on: July 24, 2007, 04:33 AM »
anyone using Amazon S3/Jungledisk?
sounds like a very good deal to me - once off (small) payment -no monthly bills
or am I wrong.. unfortunately I believe I am wrong
Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in

$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Data transfer "in" and "out" refers to transfer into and out of Amazon S3.
Data transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 is free of charge

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

Storage and bandwidth size includes all file overhead.
http://www.amazon.co...e.html?node=16427261
wonder what a "GB-Month" is  :-\  that's per GB per month I guess ..?

if you go here they'll estimate your bill but you have to know what a GB-Month is  :P )
Tom

justice

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Re: GMail Drive in My Computer
« Reply #22 on: July 24, 2007, 04:44 AM »
clever stuff. yes to have files sit on amazon s3 you pay the storage fee every month. Looks interesting, amazon s3 is really fast.
Together with SFFS it would rock so would look into it.