Makes me laugh in a way... "It was 300Mb of CRUCIAL data and no backups." When are people going to learn?!!!! Weren't we discussing trusting Google with your data somewhere I rest my case.
I've just finished reading that other thread actually! No, I've learnt my lesson with backups. I lost nearly 400GB of data a few months ago - and I know I have no one to blame except myself. Except my bank manager for not letting me buy a 400GB backup solution If you absolutely have to trust a third party to look after your data, make sure they make regular backups on your behalf, make sure you do likewise, and make sure you have a rock solid SLA for compensation if data loss occurs. Google guaranteed nothing.
And that's why they leave everything in Beta, so they can put their hands up and say "sorry, try again". Trust yourself instead.
Y'know, it's just weird. Aren't we all webmasters here? Don't we (almost) all own at least one domain? Those of us who aren't/don't, doesn't your ISP provide a mail account? Why use free accounts as a PRIMARY account? (I can see using them here and there for privacy concerns, etc.) Just thinkin'.
Because I can't store 2.5 GB of mail on my domain, or my ISP's provided account for that matter. The only way to do that is with POP, and keep it all stored on my local machine, which is no good
If the GMail service will provide everything its rumoured to provide (massive storage, web/mobile/mail client access, mail on your own domains, managing your own mailing lists, rss feeds, free buttered toast, ad nauseum) I can definitely see why people sign up for such a service. It just seems so simple. On the other hand it still hasn't been enough for me to sign up
What a bonehead. He left 300mb of "crucial" data on there? Doesn't "crucial" mean you have a backup somewhere? Hehe.
That's why GMail is so handy. You pull all mail down with POP and leave a copy on the web server. So you have a back-up at home, safe and the benefit of world wide access web based. If one fails, you have the other one.
Lesson of the day is backup your important data. Hard drives fail all the time and it's better to have learned that lesson with some email than something more critical.
Data lost, 10 years ago it was a big problem, I mean $$$$ problem. A good Tape drive was so expensive. Rotating tape was a pain and it was expensive. To day... we have 7 x 160Gb network drives (one for each day of the week). the drive I bought was at $199, we use Vision that allows us to backup on a different drive every day and remotly backup network computers. We just backup data, not system files nor the full HD. There a way to fix the critical data losses an other way than to save it on beta email account.
Read the thread. Download Thunderbird and then download your GMail emails via POP3. Might even be able to get your contact list though not sure about that.