How To Transfer Large Files To Yourself

I bet, you have experienced multiple times the essential need to transfer big files from one computer to another. While there are many options to do so, when the simple email attachment size restrictions are applicable. I am constantly experiencing this need both in case of files exchange with customer computer and between my office and home computers. Definitely, the best solution would be FTP, but in many cases there are firewall/IT restrictions which make the approach unusable.

One of the simplest methods is using one of the free online storage hosts to load and download big files, however, lately, in our company all the sites providing these services, were intentionally blocked by IT. I guess, my company is not the only one, who considers this channel to be dangerous in terms of ability to easily transfer the confidential information.

Another method, I successfully use almost all the time is Gmail. Free utility allows me to use one of my addresses to store and transfer big files. I will present this opportunity in one of the further posts, while today I want to show you an interesting approach, offered by Jason Faulkner. It is simple, elegant, and does not require any software to be involved. The solution is in using my email account, but not sending actually the files, as you usually do when exchanging the small attachments (mostly, size is limited on most servers to 10 MB). Instead, you can use email drafts to transfer the files. Compose a message on one system and upload the files you need. Then save the draft. You can open your email in web interface from any computer and download the files from your saved draft. Since you never send the email, the server limitation does not apply. Jason claims that he has been able to successfully transfer over 200 MB of files.

Next time, you can try by yourselves…