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Monday's Mac Gadget
by John F. Braun

Want to Use Gmail as a Disk? Try gDisk!
November 28th, 2005

gDisk 0.4 (Donationware)
Jean-Matthieu Schaffhauser

Google took the free e-mail world by storm when they introduced their Gmail service on April 1, 2004. At the time, some thought it was a joke, since the date is April Fool's Day, often associated with pranks. The service is no joke, however, and boasts the ability to store 1GB of information. With that amount of storage, wouldn't it be great if it could be used not only for e-mail attachments, but for general purpose storage? Enter gDisk...

gDisk is an application that allows one to use their Gmail storage space outside the confines of an e-mail system. When you start the gDisk application, it will ask for your Gmail ID and password, offering to save these values in your Keychain so you don't have to enter them again.

If this is the first time you've run gDisk, you'll be asked to create a Gmail label to store your files under. This is how gDisk performs some of its magic, mapping Gmail labels to folders that you can use to organize your files.


gDisk Application

If you click on an existing label, gDisk will query your Gmail account, and list any files stored under that label. If you click on a file and click Download, you can download the file from Gmail to your hard drive. If you'd like to transfer a file from your hard disk to Gmail, click on a label and then click on Upload, and you'll then be able to select a file to transfer.

Both the Upload and Download options will show the Transfer Queue to advise you of the progress of your file transfer. The Preferences will let you set the maximum number of simultaneous uploads and downloads, as well as automatically check for updates to the gDisk application.

So take your Gmail account beyond simple e-mail, and give gDisk a try today.

Have any other Gmail gadgets that you'd like to share? Just send an e-mail to John and he'll give it a try.

Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you with those cool things that we all just have to have on our Macs. Shareware, Freeware, Postcardware, Emailware, and even commercial apps, Monday's Mac Gadget is here to help you find and use the best of these programs.

John is a software engineer who works in the corporate R&D group of a Fortune 500 company, focusing on all aspects of communications technology. He has several degrees that claim he knows what he's doing when it comes to computers. After watching co-workers reinstall Windows, search for device drivers, and experience other horrors during the day, he's glad that he comes home to a Mac (compatible) computer. Have any comments, suggestions, or favorite Gadgets? Drop John a line at

You can also Post Your Comments below.

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Observer Comments

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Close Name:JimWCB Posts: 301 Joined: 29 Aug 2002
Mon Nov 28, 2005 5:44 pm Subject:

Ummm... a link to GDisk would have been useful:

http://gdisk.sourceforge.net/


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View Name:Guest
Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:06 pm Subject: Gmail as Disk
Close Name:Dirt Road Posts: 1228 Joined: 24 Oct 2002
Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:20 pm Subject: Backup?

Has anyone tried using this as a backup mechanism? If so, did it work?


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Close Name:boodle Posts: 42 Joined: 13 Jun 2004
Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:55 pm Subject: Anything like a 'public folder' friends could download from?

'twould be nice.


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View Name:Guest
Mon Nov 28, 2005 7:17 pm Subject: still early
Close Name:stuartea Posts: 327 Joined: 08 Aug 2005
Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:07 pm Subject:

It would be improved if it had tighter integration with the desktop.



Last edited by stuartea on Tue Nov 29, 2005 5:51 am; edited 1 time in total
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Close Name:vasic Posts: 238 Joined: 09 Aug 2005
Mon Nov 28, 2005 11:13 pm Subject: All that is nice...

We have to keep in mind that this is a hack. Google isn't exactly happy that people are doing it. It wasn't happy when Windows people did it the first time around and kept tweaking the servers to lock users of those hacks out. They are selling ad space on gMail; these hacks are totally bypassing all ads.

I wouldn't be surprised if this gDisk hack turns into the same kind of cat-and-mouse game. For now, though, it's good to have it out there. Who knows, it is possible that Google just might be the one to offer some bona fide free online storage space with a bit of advertising (I'm dismissing all those free high flyers of the late 90's that crashed and burned with the dot-com bust).


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Close Name:gslusher Posts: 2048 Joined: 13 Nov 2002
Tue Nov 29, 2005 4:32 am Subject:

Quote
Guest wrote:
So...
Why do we have to pay for .Mac?!!!!


Gee, no one is holding a gun to your head to pay for .Mac. If you don't want it, don't pay for it. If you think of .Mac as merely an email account and online storage, you're missing most of the point.

.Mac has other benefits besides email and , especially the close integration with the desktop and applications like iCal, Address Book, Safari, Backup, iPhoto, iMovie, iSync, etc. None of that is available with gMail, even with gDisk. It's not even available with ISP-provided online storage.

It's not just Apple's appications that can "sync" with .Mac/iDisk. I can export my DVD, CD, and book collection data from Bruji's "pedia" programs directly to .Mac/iDisk.

Other differences:

- This is a "hack" that Google might negate at any time.

- There's no way to use this "disk" so that other people can access it. I can use my .Mac account to store images, etc., for websites. Can't do that with gDisk.

- .Mac lets you set up a website with minimal effort.

- gMail is accessible only through a browser or maybe a special program, not a regular email client. Mail can access .Mac email accounts.

There's another drawback with gmail and other "free" email/storage programs. They have to pay for the service somehow. They put ads and links in the emails. .Mac doesn't. Also, are you absolutely sure they will never sell your information to anyone, including any company they happen to own or buy?


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Close Name:John F. Braun -   TMO Staff Posts: 227 Joined: 11 Jun 2001
Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:45 pm Subject: Title and Author Links

Quote
JimWCB wrote:
Ummm... a link to GDisk would have been useful:

http://gdisk.sourceforge.net/


My style for these articles is to provide a link to the product in the first line after the article title, and a link to the author or company in the following line.


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Close Name:John F. Braun -   TMO Staff Posts: 227 Joined: 11 Jun 2001
Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:48 pm Subject: More Comments on gDisk

Yes, as people have pointed out, this is a hack, and could stop working at any time. I've also run into crashes when trying to upload too much data at once. But hey, this is version 0.4, and I think holds great promise. As long as Google doesn't block this, I think it will be a cool product once it reaches version 1.0.


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View Name:Guest
Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:06 pm Subject:
Close Name:stuartea Posts: 327 Joined: 08 Aug 2005
Wed Nov 30, 2005 5:28 am Subject:

beat me to it : ) I'm hapilly getting my gMail in mail.

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
- gMail is accessible only through a browser or maybe a special program, not a regular email client. Mail can access .Mac email accounts.

Wrong. Gmail allows regular pop3 clients as well as redirection to other mail boxes. My Gmail account goes directly to my imap account right now, but I have used Apple Mail to access my account via pop3.

Check out the settings page on Gmail sometime, you might be pleasantly surprized.


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View Name:Guest
Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:19 am Subject:
View Name:Guest
Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:15 pm Subject:
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