Storage Devices Goes Virtual

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Written by Maureen Jane Tan

Saturday, 14 January 2006

When I was in college, I use floppy disks (diskettes) to transfer files from PC to PC. Back then the maximum size it can hold was 1.44MB. Then during the latter part of my college days, the CDRW came popular and it was easier to read and write files back then as long as you have a CD writer. But at that time I still prefer using diskettes since I hardly transfer files of huge size.

Now we have the USB thumb drives or what some people call flash drives. They come in different sizes too, with a maximum of 1GB file storage size. Of course, the bigger size it can hold the more expensive they get.

For those who don't have these gadgets, don't fret for there is another way to transfer files; just email the files to yourself and download the attachment when you need it. The only thing required is Internet connection and an email account. Though it is quite troublesome to [Compose Mail] – [Type Recipient Address] – [Attach File] – [Send]. It takes so many steps and most of the time the file attachments are limited in size. So here is another solution. Get a Gmail account and use it as a virtual drive.

You can actually use your Gmail account as a virtual drive without needing to compose mail. Download a Gmail Drive Shell Extension (http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm) and you will be able to perform basic file manipulation operations as you normally do in Windows Explorer.

Just a word of advise, the shell extension for gmail is not supported by Google and so it may have some bugs especially if Google will do upgrades to their service.