Google Mail offers 7,641MB or roughly 7.5GB of free storage space for your emails. That's a lot of space for emails and chances are, you will never really need it all. Don't you wonder how you can actually make use of it?

GMail Drive is a tool for Windows (XP through 7) that allows you to access your Google Mail storage space. Once installed, GMail Drive will appear as a device on your Computer, much like an external drive. In this article, I will show you the simple setup and explain how GMail Drive works.

How Do I Know How Much Space I Have Left On Google Mail?

Log into your Google Mail account and check the bottom left corner of your inbox. I have been using Google Mail for just over 7 years, there are more than 60,000 emails in my archive, many of which contain attachments, and yet I'm only using 38% of its full capacity.

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If you've been sending and receiving a lot more mail and realize that you don't have enough space to make good use of it, why not set up an additional account to use with GMail Drive?

How Can I Use GMail Drive?

You can download it from MajorGeeks. Unpack the ZIP archive, run the setup file, and then go to > Start > Computer to see all connected drives. GMail Drive should be listed under > Other. When you double-click it, you will be asked to log into GMail Drive using your Google account information.

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Once you're logged in, you can drag and drop files to your new network drive and use it to back up documents. You will subsequently be able to access these documents from any computer with an Internet connection, either by logging into your Google Mail account via the web interface or by installing GMail Drive on the respective computer.

gmail drive windows 7

How Does GMail Drive Work?

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension for Windows. It creates a virtual filesystem for your Google Mail account to give you direct access to your account through Windows Explorer.

When you drag and drop files to your GMail Drive, the tool creates an email with the respective file as an attachment. So GMail Drive is not very convenient if you download your Google Mail through POP. You can still set Google Mail to store all your mail online, but a copy of the file will be downloaded to your computer.

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In any case, I would recommend to set up a filter to automatically remove all emails created by GMail Drive from your inbox and archive them or sort them into a specific folder. To create a filter, open one of the emails, then go to > More > Filter messages like these and enter > GMAILFS: into the subject field of your filter. Then proceed to define what GMail should do with these emails.

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What Else Do I Need To Know?

GMail Drive has a few limitations that you should be aware of:

  • File names should be less than 65 characters long.
  • The file size limit corresponds to the maximum size of attachments for mails sent with Google Mail. Presently, this is 25MB.
  • Since files are stored as email attachments in your personal email account, you cannot share these files directly with your friends, unless you grant them access to the respective account.

Given these limitations, GMail Drive may not quite be what you're looking for. In that case, have a look at these alternatives:

So what do you think of GMail Drive? Is it useful or past its prime?