I’m running out of disk space on this trusted notebook of mine. Yeah, I thought I’d never run out of the 80GB of disk space. Guess I was wrong. So, off I went to search for an online file storage solution. The main criteria – it’s got to be free.
Googling for “free file storage on the internet” returns me loads of options to choose from. I am quite surprised at number of solutions that exists out there at the moment. There’s just a whole lot of them. Most are free too. Amazing. Disk space sure is cheap nowadays I guess.
Then I remembered that I once used a Firefox extension that allowed me to utilize GMail as a file storage. So, I Googled once again. That’s when I found GSpace.
Why GSpace? Well, I’m familiar with GMail. I’m familiar with FireFox. I’m online with both of them pretty much the entire working hours of my life. So.. Why not?
Here are the steps to utilize GMail as your free file storage on the internet with the GSpace Firefox Extension.
1. Download and Install GSpace FireFox Extension
Of course, this should be the first thing to do. Provided, you are alredy running Firefox. So head on over to GSpace and download the GSpace FireFox Extension. Don’t worry, it wont bite.
2. Configure GSpace.
After installation and restarting Firefox, launch the GSpace interface from FireFox’s Tools menu. The GSpace interface is pretty much similar to an FTP program user interface. You get a window showing your local drives and a window showing the remote location files.
GSpace User Interface
Click on the Manage Accounts button and enter your GMail account details. You can specify as many Gmail accounts as you want. You can only use them one at a time though. You’ve got to login and logout from each in order to use them.
3. Login to GSpace
After you’ve configured the accounts, select one which you would like to use and click the Login button right next to it. Enter your password.
4. Select files and store
Select the files you’d like to store on your GMail file storage, and click on the right arrow button. Wait for the upload to complete.
That’s all there is to it. You can now delete the file from your local machine if you want to. You already have a copy of it in your GMail account. Whenever you want it back, you will first have to download it over from your GMail mailbox.
Pretty nifty tool, I’d say this GSpace Extension. Nothing sophisticated about it. It just serves its purpose well. I like it. I suppose there are some limitations to what you can do with it. I have yet to fully explore it as yet.
All I can say for now, it’s worth a try. File upload speed is just fine too. As can be seen in the following video.
Do you use GSpace? Do you use the other online storage solutions? I also discovered that Microsoft too has an internet storage solution called SkyDrive. Any SkyDrive users out there?