Map a network drive to your online SkyDrive, Amazon S3 or Google Apps

A Friday tip via @scottisafool, a good friend of mine who knows Live Writer like the back of his hand. You can now use Windows Live SkyDrive as a network location which sits as a drive in your Computer folder. To be honest, the only thing that's good about SkyDrive is the storage, and for this is what I will use.

The process is very simple, and if you're looking at this post and think it looks like a lot - it really isn't.

1. Download Gladinet Cloud Desktop. It's free and only around 12MB so it should download fairly quickly. 2. Start the installation process and go through as you normally would. 3. During the installation process, ensure these two boxes are ticked.

4. Launch the Gladinet Cloud Desktop application at the end of the installation screen by hitting Close. 5. During the setup, make sure you only use the free starter edition. This is all you will need.

6. Select a drive letter which you want to use as your network SkyDrive. I normally choose Z: as my primary network drive letter.

7. Pick a space on your local hard drive where you can use as an offline cache. Make sure that drive is in your own user profile area (if you have multiple users on one machine) and that the drive you select also has at least 25GB free.

8. If you wish to encrypt your local cache, then select the tick box as so and enter in a password. Hit Next. 9. Ensure that automatic updates are checked, then hit Finish. A status icon will appear in the notification area.

10. A new dialog box will appear. Select the tick box at the bottom making sure the screen doesn't show next time, then hit "Mount Disk Storage or Web Storage as Virtual Directory". 11. Select "Windows Live SkyDrive" or the storage provider of your choice, and name it.

12. On the next screen, follow the instructions on screen and enter in your service username/email and password. 13. Hit "Yes" to any prompts, such as those to accept the end-user licence agreement.

And there you have it. You can still only upload files smaller than 50MB, but if you want to carry out a full system backup and place it on the web, this can still be done. Backup the hard drive and convert (if it isn't done automatically) to an ISO. Use this ISO in WinRAR or a file splitting utility, and create the portions smaller than 50MB in size. Upload away, and your hard drive is backed up securely and safely online.