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Comment by itake

4 years ago

Back in the day when @gmail was famous for their massive free storage for email, ppl wrote scripts to chunk large files and store them as email attachments.

I used this as a backup target for the longest time. Simply split the backup file into 10 MB chunks and send as mails to a gmail account. Encrypted so no privacy problems. Rock solid for years.

And as it was just storing emails it was even using gmail for it's intended purpose so no TOS problems..

  • Yup, did the exact same thing to back up all of the Wordpress installs on a free server I ran for friends.

People did this on AOL in the 90s as well!

  • With AOL, in the early 90’s you didn’t even need to do that. You could just reformat and reuse the floppy disks they were always sending you for free storage.