GMail Drive was a free

third-party Third party may refer to: Business * Third-party source, a supplier company not owned by the buyer or seller * Third-party beneficiary, a person who could sue on a contract, despite not being an active party * Third-party insurance, such as a Veh ...

Windows Shell namespace In Windows Shell programming, the Windows Shell namespace is an organized tree-structured hierarchical representation that Windows Explorer facilitates to graphically present file system contents and other objects to the end user. Conceptually, ...

extension ("add-on") for

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...

. It allowed a user to access a virtual drive stored in a

account by causing the contents of the Gmail account to appear as a new

network share In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network. It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another comput ...

on the user's workstation. GMail Drive was not supported by Google. In order to use GMail Drive, the user needed a Gmail

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

account. The add-on enabled the user to use the standard

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

desktop file

copy and paste In human–computer interaction and user interface design, cut, copy, and paste are related commands that offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The ''cut'' command removes the ...

commands to transfer files to and from the Gmail account as if it were a drive on the user's computer. Gmail Drive was based upon GmailFS, a

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

developed by Richard Jones. GMail Drive was published in 2004 and functional as early as 2005 which predates Google's later implementation of

Google Drive Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google's servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files. In addi ...

released on April 24, 2012. As of 2015, the official extension page declares the project dead.

Function

In order for GMail Drive to operate, the computer must be connected to the Internet and the user must have a Gmail account. A broadband connection is preferable, though not necessary, as all operations are done through Gmail and consequently over the Internet. GMail Drive uses the inbox of the Gmail account to store files and creates a virtual filesystem on top of the Gmail account, enabling the user to save and retrieve files stored on the Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive adds a new virtual drive to the computer under the My Computer folder, where the user can create new folders, copy and

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

files to, but does not give an actual drive letter, such as C:, preventing its use in all

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

applications, and some older Windows applications. When the user creates a new file using GMail Drive, it generates an e-mail and posts it to the Gmail account's inbox. The e-mail appears in the normal Inbox folder when using the normal Gmail interface, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. GMail Drive periodically checks the mail account (using the Gmail search function) to see if new files have arrived and to rebuild the virtual drive's directory structures. Multiple computers can connect to one Gmail account thus allowing GMail Drive to act as a multi-user file server. Consequently, restrictions on the Gmail service are also enforced when using GMail Drive. For example, files larger than 25 MB cannot be uploaded, as the maximum file size of Gmail attachments is 25 MB. In the past, Gmail also prevented users from transferring certain file types, such as an

executable In computing, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instruction (computer science), instructi ...

ZIP Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

archives that contain an executable within. Some users bypassed this restriction by renaming the file extension or by putting it into a

RAR RAR or Rar may refer to: * Radio acoustic ranging, a non-visual technique for determining a ship's position at sea * "rar", the ISO 639-2 code for the Cook Islands Māori language * RAR (file format), a proprietary compressed archive file format in ...

or 7z archive. This restriction has now been lifted. A GNU software package name
PhpGmailDrive
even makes it possible to link different Gmail accounts together, and with some manual changes you can have a Gmail Drive built out of several Gmail accounts.

Caveats

GMail Drive is an experimental package that depends on but is not provided by Google. Changes in Google's Gmail system may render GMail Drive temporarily or permanently inoperable. The current GMail Drive does not support accounts that are hosted with

Google Apps Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and later G Suite) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet ...

. The Gmail Program Policies do not explicitly ban GMail Drive, shell namespace extensions, or the use of Gmail storage space for files other than e-mail. Nonetheless, immoderate use of GMail Drive may trigger Google to temporarily suspend a Gmail account.

References

External links

GMail Drive Site
o
alternative link
*(www.viksoe.dk cite

Linux version as ''original idea'')
PhpGmailDrive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gmail Drive Gmail Network file systems Windows-only freeware