Use Google Storage as a One-Time Cost, Lifetime Backup Solution
You can get extra Gmail storage pretty cheaply from Google, but eagle-eyed reader gthing lets us know that you have read access to that storage even after you cancel your subscription.
You have read and write access to your storage for an entire year after paying, but if you choose not to renew, you still have access to your data for as long as you want—you just can’t add more stuff. From Google’s policy:
No matter when you cancel your storage subscription, your extra storage will be available for the entire year you’ve purchased. After your plan expires, your storage will be limited to each individual product’s free storage quota. Under our current policy, any content over the free storage quota will still be accessible, however you will not be able to add new content until your storage balance falls below the free storage limit.
It won’t work as a continuous backup solution, but it works great as a one-time data dump. So, while you wouldn’t want to necessarily store important data there (since most important data gets outdated quickly), I could see it being useful for, say, TV seasons that you bought on iTunes but already watched, or other similar space hogs—essentially, things that you don’t want to delete but don’t have the hard drive space to let them sit around and collect dust.
[via #tips]Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.
Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.I would not trust this tip, since they can change their policy at any time and potentially wipe out your archives. Also note Mxx’s comment above about how not being able to add new content includes getting new e-mail.That said, I’m very tempted to just pay for a bunch of space every year because it’s pretty cheap storage.
Anyone know if there are tools that can actually let you use it for automated backup? Or is there something that will let you create a virtual drive out of the space?
Essentially, I’m looking to turn it into gDrive. Reply
if i read it correctly, unless you do this on a secondary account, once the subscription ends, the account remains locked until your data gous below the allowed quota for free accounts ? (locked, in the sense that ALL the account is read only) ReplyJordan Posey promoted this commentThat’s a bad tip/suggestion.
Read what happens when you don’t pay up for your additional storage [techcrunch.com] ReplyJordan Posey promoted this commentSeems like an incredible crap shot for anything truly important. I assume there’s language buried in there somewhere which allows them to change the policy at any time, even if it does evil… Reply
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