Here at Mobile Sacrifice we love Dropbox for its seamless ability to sync all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere across most platforms and devices. If like us however, your on the low side of your available free space for Dropbox storage, there is now a great and free way to gain extra GB’s of space – just by using your smart phone and the latest build of the Dropbox computer software.

Dropbox are, for a special beta period, testing their automatic photo and video uploading feature when you plug your smart phone into your computer that has the latest version of their software installed. In return for trying their experimental build, you can get up to 4.5GB of extra space for free. This experimental Dropbox build 1.3.12 imports photos and videos automatically from cameras, phones, and SD cards and batch uploads and downloads files. The forum post on Dropbox says:

During this beta period, we are also offering additional free space to test automatic uploading of photos and videos. For every 500MB of photos and videos automatically uploaded, you’ll receive another 500MB space bonus, up to 4.5GB total.

The downloads for Windows, Mac and Linux are only available from the forum post. Note that you are STRONGLY advised to make a backup of what’s in your Dropbox before upgrading to this build, and give the linked forum post a read through as there have been some issues with Linux and Mac.

After I installed the new client and plugged in my iPhone 4, the Windows 7 Autoplay option appeared in which I selected to import my media using Dropbox, which it put it all (over 4.5GB’s worth of videos and pictures that I had on my iPhone) into a new “Camera Uploads” folder and after uploading to my account had the extra 4.5GB automatically credited. Super easy!

Let us know how this works for you and any issues you might have in the comments below, as well any other great ways to generate extra Dropbox space you might know.

Via Get Up to 4.5GB of Extra Space on Dropbox for Uploading Photos and Videos / How-to-Geek.