Amazon Cloud Drive Now Includes Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans

[Edsel]

My biggest fear with "Cloud" systems is copyright protection and privacy. Read the EULA's VERY carefully before signing up and keep abreast of EULA amendments, which can happen with rapidity. In the past, some systems assumed copyright authority over your content.

I keep multiple backups, in multiple formats, in multiple locations. Don't rely on one location (cloud) to save your work.

 

[LizKat]

THIS SERVICE IS NOT UNLIMITED.

Lifted from the top post on Hacker News, from Amazon's own terms:

"We may terminate the Agreement or restrict, suspend or terminate your use of the Service at our discretion without notice at any time, including if we determine that your use violates the Agreement, is improper, substantially exceeds or differs from normal use by other users, or otherwise involves fraud or misuse of the Service or harms our interests or those of another user of the Service." (Emphasis mine.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...1376540&ref_=cd_tou_fp&?ref_=cd_unlimited_tou

So much for wondering if taxpayers could save a bundle on storage charges for the USA to keep backups of stuff like, you know, IRS data since 1913, the contents of the Library of Congress, or transcripts of assorted senatorial filibusters.

Personally I'd be more concerned by the conditions of use than by the possible upper-end limits. Encrypted uploads would be the only way to go, and even at that it's possible down the road you'd discover that some amendment you failed to read in full had impaired your rights to whatever you had uploaded. What a world we live in now. I know there's no free lunch but when you pay for the lunch, you should not expect fine print that says you may end up sharing what's on your plate with the host.

 

[AppleHater]

How do I use Amazon cloud for my photos in iPhone and MacBook?

 

[bobenhaus]

Nice. Another move by Amazon that is not intended to create actual current profit. But they will continue to corner the market in giving stuff away at large scale.

Like customers really care about Amazon making a profit. Its about what the customer is offered not about Amazon's business model or profit.

 

[OfficialMiguelN]

Highly Doubt its forever

I highly doubt that any storage service can handle an unlimited space, im 90% postive that this is a gimick maybe within the fine print it may have language about it being limited
" To the magnifiying glass"
still awesome not to worry about space.

 

[Candlelight]

It seems Amazon hasn't released these changes to users yet. I can just see plans for different sizes (5gb-1000gb) and unlimited for Prime users. So please correct the news according to this.

I can see the changes.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I got excited until I found out it's one of those things where you have to install a Dropbox-like desktop application. I want it to be accessible by FTP or something.

So spin up an EC2 instance and setup an FTP server that links to your unlimited storage. No biggie.

 

[576316]

What's the general consensus on using Cloud storage for photo backup? Is the rule of thumb that you should have at least one physical back up in conjunction with a Cloud backup?

 

[DanGoh]

Muahahahaha! Another perk my Amazon Prime membership.

My only concern is if auto save to the cloud will impact battery life on my iPhone 6.

 

[wolfboy]

This move from Amazon sparked me to revisit the cloud storage options out there and ended up with Google Drive. As a longtime Dropbox user, I've always used them and never looked at other options because of their awesome desktop client, but they are really dropping the ball when it comes to competitive pricing. So I'm happy to say after installing the Google Drive desktop client, it is pretty much on par with Dropbox, and both are way ahead of Box, which is slow and buggy.

Some of my findings...

Dropbox
2gb - free (can get up to about 5-7gb free if you do a bunch of stuff)
1tb - $10/month
Cons: No 100gb pricing option.

Google Drive
15gb - free
100gb - $2/month
Cons: No camera upload, though I bet this will be changing very very soon.

One Drive
15gb - free
100gb - $2/month
Cons: MS have the right to snoop your files for shady content. Have a policy against storing files with nudity, pirated stuff, etc.

Box
10gb - free (50gb free if you downloaded the iOS app during the promo period)
100gb - $5/month
Cons: 250mb file size limit unless you pay. Buggy desktop client.

iCloud
5gb - free
20gb - $1/month
200gb - $4/month
Cons: Only works with Apple products. No 100gb option.

Amazon Cloud Storage
Unlimited photos/5gb everything else - $1/month
Unlimited everything - $5/month
Cons: no auto syncing from what I'm reading. Archaic drag-and-drop to upload.

 

[Macman1993]

This is a new move for Amazon.

Why not just include it in Prime and increase the price of Prime? That's been your mojo prior to this.

NO! I am so tired of Amazon adding stuff I don't want and raising the price of it. All I want is free 2 day shipping, I don't care about amazon's storage options or media services.

 

[MH01]

Not available yet in the UK.

Damit, looked so good and I wanted to check if it was US only

 

[dmylrea]

How is this a good deal? For $99/yr I get 5 licenses of Office 2013 (plus upgrades to new versions), 5 users EACH get 1TB of OneDrive storage (not unlimited but essentially is...), and each user gets 60 Skype minutes each month. This versus $60 for ONE user getting just unlimited space...hmmm...

Amazon should offer unlimited cloud FOR FREE for Kindle users...since they eff'ed us on no Google services...

 

[coolspot18]

Read up on RAID.

RAID is not backup - it's a method of redundancy. You still need to backup your RAID drive.

I clone my Mac to my Synology RAID. Nightly it backs upto and old NAS. Nightly a copy is also uploaded to the cloud. Every 6 months I copy my photos to a USB drive. In essence I have 4 copies of my data.

A bit extreme for most people, but you get the point

What's the general consensus on using Cloud storage for photo backup? Is the rule of thumb that you should have at least one physical back up in conjunction with a Cloud backup?

Absolutely! Nothing is perfect - cloud backups can be lost, local backups can be stolen / fire damaged. So yes, multiple copies.

I use Arq to backup my photos to Google Drive and Amazon.

----------

Some of my findings...


Google Drive
15gb - free
100gb - $2/month
Cons: No camera upload, though I bet this will be changing very very soon.

One Drive
15gb - free
100gb - $2/month
Cons: MS have the right to snoop your files for shady content. Have a policy against storing files with nudity, pirated stuff, etc.

Google Drive has a 1TB option for $9.99; One Drive offers 1TB with Office 365, in fact I think some plans offer unlimited storage too.

 

[dmylrea]

Read up on RAID.

And, if your house burns down, along with your uber-expensive external RAID drive solution? I think he meant should (somehow) his external drive wind up being unusable. Even with RAID, it can fail.

 

[furi0usbee]

I've tried them all, and always go back to Dropbox. It's by far the most expensive, but it's the only one that just works. They keep the $9.99/mo price point and just keep giving me more storage. I don't need 1TB. I'd pay $4.99/mo. for 250 GB. Or better still, sell me the DB client app, and let me bring my own storage (S3). That be coo!

 

[InfoTime]

Spend some time learning about the 3 - 2 - 1 backup system that is popular in the IT world.

3 - copies of your data
2 - on two different media
1 - copy off site

 

[unplugme71]

Really. No thanks then Amazon.

exactly. I canceled my fee trial right away

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You would think Amazon of all companies would know the definition of 'privacy'

"They are safe, until we need to access them, then they are not safe"

I don't mind if they need to use my files during a court order, but to just access it at free will is unacceptable! Am I then responsible if someone there copies my music and sells it while DRM has my name linked to it from iTunes?

 

[LV426]

I e-mailed Amazon UK regarding this announcement, and they replied stating that there are no plans to introduce an Unlimited tier at a similar price point in the UK.

Boo!

Gotta give the NSA time to put something in place that will slurp up all that extra non-US data.

 

[acuriouslad]

iCloud is a rip-off!

I wish Apple discounted their iCloud storage! I would love to dive into the world of online storage and have all my photos in full quality stored in the cloud and synced across all my devices, plus video, music, etc.

Even if I had to pay $5/TB per month I'd be happy.

Even better would be if Apple integrated all their services, iTunes match/Beats Music (Beats is essential iTunes match with an unlimited number of songs as it has local storage options) and iCloud Storage (starting at 5TB) and whatever other online services they offer (that I've missed) in a package for a price of $20/month. Also including an option for Time Machine to iCloud with no size limit - hence unlimited restoring from the past for $10/month for all Mac's using an Apple ID.

If Apple created Time Machine in iCloud, if I were to save a video to my computer desktop randomly and then deleted it, I could go back from any Mac/iOS device and restore it to a folder in iCloud for access to it across all devices. That would be awesome!

I mean they have enough money to be highly competitive if not completely obliterate the competition.

Also no file size upload limits and super quick upload speeds with servers in every country. I'm in Aus and when we all get the capability in the next eight years (yeah it's a while away for fixed line) to have 40Mbps uploads, I want to be able to actually utilise it not 500Kbps or something stupid.

 

[tanyet]

How is this a good deal? For $99/yr I get 5 licenses of Office 2013 (plus upgrades to new versions), 5 users EACH get 1TB of OneDrive storage (not unlimited but essentially is...), and each user gets 60 Skype minutes each month. This versus $60 for ONE user getting just unlimited space...hmmm...

Amazon should offer unlimited cloud FOR FREE for Kindle users...since they eff'ed us on no Google services...

This is definitely the best deal. The Home version of 365 is truly unlimited, not just 1TB. And thats for 5 different users.

 

[HD303]

As photographer, with close to a TB of RAW images, this entices me however, will my images remain in full size resolution?

 

[Vanilla Face]

it would be nice to have something that only has 3GBs of space after apps/OS.

That's why they offer larger capacities. Get the one that works for you and stop complaining about the ones that don't. They meet the needs of a lot of people.

 

[Vanilla Face]

So much for wondering if taxpayers could save a bundle on storage charges for the USA to keep backups of stuff like, you know, IRS data since 1913, the contents of the Library of Congress, or transcripts of assorted senatorial filibusters.

So I see that as going one of three ways. They never terminate an account and this isn't a problem. They terminate accounts for this reason and have a suit brought against them for false advertising, which is settled by restoring accounts or no longer calling it unlimited.

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Some of my findings...

iCloud
5gb - free
20gb - $1/month
200gb - $4/month
Cons: Only works with Apple products. No 100gb option.

It works with devices other than Apple products. How is no 100gb option a con? That's completely arbitrary.

Con: No 73gb storage option.

 

[DriedTurnip]

What? This sounds too good to be true!! And I'm assuming Amazon maintains my original full size image files, unlike Google+ ??

Signing up now!

Google stores photos in their original size up to 75mb in size.