Since January 2010, Google docs has allowed you to store any type of file, even arbitrary binary files. However, there are a couple of gotchas: one cannot upload files greater than 1GB in size, and you may want to encrypt your files so that not just anyone can read them (for instance server backup files).

The two bash scripts below provide a solution for the above. I call them the ‘mince’ scripts ‘cos they slice and dice your files and hopefully you’ll get hamburgers back at the end of the day. These scripts depend on you having a fairly new version of bash on your unix-like system, the ‘split’ utility and gnupg (GPG) which is used for the encryption/decryption. If you’re unsure of GPG, a good getting started guide can be found here.

It must be said that google docs is (in my opinion) currently not the best way to store your files in the cloud. In fact, I wrote another blog post describing the “google storage” options in greater depth.