You could have stopped doing that a while ago, there are 3rd party applications that let you use your Gmail account as a drive. And yes all the folders and sub folders are kept intact when you download them to another computer.

We’ve actually written an article before outlining those various tools available, but nothing would beat Google developing their own service that is well integrated.

Nosh wrote:

What if they integrate it into our Gmail accounts and keep the 5GB cap or maybe increase it by a couple of gigs? That way they give the Gdrive to everyone with a Gmail account with way less overhead. It’ll also make sense to have all our attachments easily accessible through a file manager.

I hope it will have some kind of integration in Gmail. That way I could stop having to email files to myself.

You could have stopped doing that a while ago, there are 3rd party applications that let you use your Gmail account as a drive. And yes all the folders and sub folders are kept intact when you download them to another computer.

However there is the slight problem where your account may get suspended if you upload more than 400Mb at any one time, there are no issues/limits on downloading though which is good.

Most of my files that I store online are pictures and media but the only way I would use an official “G-Drive” would be if I could use it as a normal drive. The problem I have will all of the online storage places like DivShare, MediaMax, AOL’s X-Drive, Photobucket, is they all have these horrendously slow java applets that are geared towards ‘mediacenter’ functions like photo albums. All I need is a place to dump files, don’t care how pretty it is.

What if they integrate it into our Gmail accounts and keep the 5GB cap or maybe increase it by a couple of gigs? That way they give the Gdrive to everyone with a Gmail account with way less overhead. It’ll also make sense to have all our attachments easily accessible through a file manager.

I hope it will have some kind of integration in Gmail. That way I could stop having to email files to myself.

Comments about privacy here do amuse me – if you don’t want Google having access to your data here’s a clever idea – don’t f**king give it to them.

I agree with the comment about DivShare though – at the end of the day whatever system they come up with will need to be as easy as using a USB drive if they want me to use it for regular data transfer. With a USB drive I can access my documents quickly, save them directly to the drive etc. Unless they come up with some sort of uber FTP software you won’t get the same quick portability.

I would use it, but as backup rather than for transfer. The size doesn’t bother me – the fact that it’s there would be good enough.

I agree that if you’re worried about privacy, you shouldn’t use it. It’s just one of those topics that will always come up though.

5GB does seem excessive for Gmail, so I think they could probably stop it all together.

I don’t think any web interfaces let you upload and download a whole folder, with all it’s subfolders in tact. That’s what I want to see.

That would be really awesome, but I think they would have to create a software application to do that.

That’s all I would use it for as well. There are some things that I wouldn’t mind having backed up at an offsite location, but I want something that is easier to use than any of the solutions currently available.

I agree, 5GB is a lot just for email. That’s probably why they offer it though, because they are counting on people not actually using it.