For those that aren’t familiar with it, Gmail is Google’s web-based e-mail service. It offers a range of unique features, including a great built-in search feature.

But one of my favorites features of Gmail is its incredible amount of storage space– over two gigabytes worth.

Two gigabytes is a lot of space for most people. But Gmail doesn’t just let you keep your e-mail. You can store anything in there if you just know how.

And “anything” could include family photos, your resume, some short video clips, or the entire contents of your iPod nano.

In the past, “geeks” like myself had to create draft e-mails in Gmail and “attach” files to them anytime we wanted to back-up files on Gmail.

But it was worth it. By backing up your important files to your Gmail account, you can get get access to them from any computer on the internet.

A new, free, Cocoa-based utility called gDisk makes it even easier for Mac users.

gDisk is an open source Mac program that, according to their web site, “turns your GMail account into a portable hard drive so you can always have your important files accessible accross the Internet.”

It’s kind of like Finder, but for Gmail. And it’s pretty much like you’d expect. The interface is set up such that the left side is “labels”, and the right side shows file names.

The labels can be anything you want. Basically, they’re just “folders” you can use to store your files. gDisk adds a “.gDisk” to the end of the label names you choose, and just creates new labels in your gMail account.

Another neat thing I discovered is that gDisk doesn’t seem to interfere with the Gmail Notifier tool. This allows you to have Gmail Notifier constantly checking the status of one Gmail account while you use gDisk to backup files to a separate Gmail account.

At version 0.2, it’s safe to assume that bugs could lurk around any corner. But it has worked fine for me so far!

If you don’t have a free Gmail account, and you want one, contact me and I’ll send you an “invitation”.

Update: Version 0.3 of gDisk has been released.