Use your e-mail to perform backups

If like me you’re constantly running out of hard drive space then you should consider using something like Backup2Email to backup your files.

With Gmail offering 2GB of space and constantly increasing, it’s a shame not to take advantage. Backup2Email has clearly been designed with Gmail in mind and is ideal for personal backups. It allows you to backup your documents, personal information, address book and anything else that’s taking up valuable space on your hard drive.

To get going, first you have to define a folder to backup from such as “My Documents”. You then need to associate an e-mail account with this and check the box “Enable Backup to Email”. This does involve divulging the access details of your account but the developers ensure that all data transfers are encrypted. Backup2Email will then automatically backup whatever is in your folder and send it to your Gmail (if that’s the account you’ve defined). You’ll then see a message with a subject such as Bak2Email_MyDocuments with your data attached.

Alternatively, you can use Backup2Email to download data to a specific folder. This is in the Task Setting dialog and involves entering exactly the same type of data as above. Backup2Email will then ZIP and download files to your hard drive when you need them.

Backup2Email is a useful tool for anyone that’s run out of hard drive space and needs an extra boost although storing data online is not necessarily the most secure or private way of storing it.