Gladinet, a desktop software program aimed at connecting users to their online storage, is fast becoming the go-to program for Windows users looking to map desktop drives to their favorite web services. Already, users of the software have been able to add network drives that connect to Amazon’s S3, Box.net, and Windows Live SkyDrive, among others. Additionally, the program makes cloud to cloud backup and migration between services as easy as drag-and-drop.
Today, the company is announcing the addition of Google Storage, a service nicknamed “GDrive” among Internet users, to its lineup of supported options.
Accessing Google Storage from your Desktop
Although Gladinet previously supported Google Docs, Google’s online office suite, they did not yet provide an option to connect to Google Storage. This additional online storage space is provided to Google users who need more gigabytes than is provided for free via Google’s programs. Specifically, Google Storage is shared between Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Docs. Affordably priced starting at $5.00 for an extra 20 GB per year and going up to 1 TB and beyond, Google Storage users have access to some of the most reasonably priced cloud storage available on the net today. And with the recent change to Google Docs, which now allows any file type to be uploaded, the storage space is more valuable than ever.
With the additional support now provided by Gladinet, you can drag-and-drop your files from your desktop to Google Storage using Windows Explorer. Once installed, the software allows you to map a virtual drive in Explorer to your online sites and services.
Why Bring the Cloud to the Desktop?
While some may scoff at such a hybrid approach to cloud computing – after all, the whole purpose of the cloud is to move away from desktop-based software – Gladinet is an incredibly valuable tool for both transitioning to the cloud and for managing cloud-to-cloud backups.
For those of us who have collected multiple gigabytes of files over the years, using the various cloud services’ own uploading tools can be tedious at times, even painful, especially when attempting the initial upload to a new service. With Gladinet, though, you can upload everything you own with just a few clicks. That makes the final move from desktop to cloud much easier for those ready to make the change for good. Additionally, since multiple services are supported, Gladinet lets you backup your online files from one cloud storage provider to another. For example, you can backup your Google Docs to Amazon S3, EMC Atmos, Box.net, Windows Live SkyDrive, among others. Gladinet even allows you to automate this cloud-to-cloud copying procedure.
The backup feature and its related automation procedures are only available in the paid editions of the software. However, the basic drive mapping abilities are supported in the free version of the program which runs on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 2003 computers only.
