I came across this topic which basically says that you can use Gmail to store your files.

If you're lucky, you get some free gmail invites to be sent to your friends when you open a gmail account. Now if you just keep sending the invites to yourself, you'll end up with lots more gmail accounts, isn't it? (I've tried it, you CAN create multiple gmail accounts by inviting yourself) And that means more storage space if you use each account to store 2 GB of things right?

Could it possibly rival other premium data backup services online, most importantly for Free?

Also, is using Gmail for storage and creating multiple gmail accounts acceptable by gmail policies? I've a feeling that creating multiple accounts is not, cos' I thought i read it somewhere, but a lot of people I know have multiple gmail accounts anyway.

I dont think it will rival other premium data back up services. These services are specifically designed for storing files, where GMail is used for sending files to other people. I think uploading to GMail would be slower because most files that are expected to be uploaded are small, and doesn't it scan the files for viruses before uploading/downloading? It will also be a lot more inconvenient to upload to GMail. The premium services are designed to upload and retrieve files quickly and efficiently. The only advantage I see here is cost, which seems to be the main thing anyway.

You haven't write true.. Gmail have just a limit 20mb/file .. You cant storage then bigger files there and for uploading that bigger files there are other pages If you want to storage your photos then yes you can use gmail. But bigger files as 20mb you can't upload I tried it. I'm just uploading photos here not films or other things I have multiple accounts here too but one for photos only and second for personal things as mails from school etc.

Oops you're both right. I forgot about the file limit. So I guess you can't back up large files like movies and videos unless you split them up, which can be time-consuming and not worth the effort.

So far I only use gmail to store small files like music files, photos and documents so it's still good for me. In fact, I sometimes rely more on gmail than my thumbdrive. Like if I have a document, I prefer to upload it to gmail using the mail attachment method.

I've heard of people using google for file storage; however, i've never been interested in doing it. I do know that you can get a googlepages account and upload files to that too, I did that for a little while and will again when my game is finally finished; however, I haven't checked the file limit.

Also, i'd like to point out you no longer need an invite to get a gmail account, it was opened to the public a few months ago, can't remember exactly when though.

Oh lol I was too preoccupied with my multiple accounts to notice that you could sign up for gmail from the main page now. If you're using the accounts for yourself, I find sending invitations more organized though, cos' for example, you could send all the invites to your main gmail account and you'll be able to keep track of all your gmail ids. That's just for me though.

Gmail is great for backing up documents and pictures, you just use Gmail Drive as set a filter so it archives it. It's really nice. But 20mb is the file size limit, I guess you could rar it and then split it, that would work

Sam.

I dont see why it would be a bad idea, but only if you've got a relative small or medium size of data to store.... really all you would have to do is email or attach to an email the data you want to store to your self, and then just archive the email, afterall, gmail does give you unlimited space to archive your messages anyway!

it's a good idea if you got fast enough upload
but is there any maximum size per file ?

at yahoo is max. 10mB as far as I know and also limits the upload speed at 30kb..yeah that is bad...