Gmail Drive is a tool that allows us to use a Gmail account as a Windows storage device.

Gmail is, without a doubt, one of the most popular worldwide e-mail services. This is due to the large storage capacity, ease of use, and accessibility of the service. In addition, a Gmail account is required to create a Google Account that gives access to a multitude of Google services.

Gmail Drive allows us to use Gmail storage space to store our files. This program is very simple, so we need to unzip the downloaded file to a folder and run the “Setup.exe” file. The program will be installed in the operating system, and to make use of it, we should go to “My Computer” or “This computer” (depending on the version of Windows that we have). We will see a new drive called “GMail Drive.”

The first time we access the “Gmail Drive” drive, it shows a login screen where we must enter the email address and password of our Gmail email account. We can check the option “Auto-login” so the program doesn't ask any more our e-mail and password. We can also use the “HTTP Secure” option, which allows encrypted communication between our PC and the Google servers, and therefore avoid the risk that someone will steal our email's password.

Once logged in, we will see that “GMail Drive” is like any other drive in the system so that we can copy, paste, delete, move, create folders, etc. The only difference is that all the stored files will be in the Gmail email account. Because of this, the file copy and move speed will depend on our Internet connection. Because it's a system drive, we can send files to this drive from anywhere in Windows explorer using the “send to” option, which appears in the context menu by clicking the right mouse button on any file or folder.

Drive's capacity is determined entirely by the limit of the Gmail account. Presently, the Gmail account allows 15 Gigabytes of storage, so we will have that space to store our files. Keep in mind that 15 GB is shared with two other services of Google: Google Drive and Google+ Photos. So if, for example, we use 5 GB in our Google+ Photos, we will have 10 GB free to share between Google Drive and Gmail.

Another limitation of this tool caused by a Gmail limitation is the file size of the files copied to the drive. This limit is 25 Megabytes. Previously there was a further restriction on the type of files it was possible to copy; .exe and .zip files were not allowed to be uploaded. This restriction doesn't already exist, and we can upload any file.

This program is not developed by Google and therefore does not have the official support of Google. Because of this, it is possible that the program will not be able to connect to our Gmail account in some situations. In these cases, it is good to check if a new software version exists that fixes the problem. The current version is 1.0.20 and doesn't have any connection problems.

If we have installed an earlier version and want to upgrade to a more updated one, we need to overwrite the old files with the new ones that come within the .zip file, run the “Setup.exe” file and restart the PC.

We must not confuse GMail Drive with Google Drive. Google Drive is the official Google service to store files in the cloud.