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Competition in distant (off site), large-to-unlimited storage is only a good thing. Hopefully the others respond and we find our way to:
-"time machine"-like options,
-with the safety of being truly off-site,
-by reliable players,
-for relatively cheap rates.

-easily accessible for NSA and partners :)
 
Competition in distant (off site), large-to-unlimited storage is only a good thing. Hopefully the others respond and we find our way to:
-"time machine"-like options,
-with the safety of being truly off-site,
-by reliable players,
-for relatively cheap rates.

I suspect that "photo" really means "jpg".

I wonder how CrashPlan and BackBlaze will react to this, if Amazon will become a viable alternative for real offsite backups, which of course would need client software. Wonder if it will be rate-limited or throttled to prevent it from being used that way.

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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.

That's called Dreamhost.
 
What prevents malefactors from storing millions of large data files for free, each cleverly wrapped in some image format?

The problem with "unlimited" file storage is that the number of files that can be synced is not clear in that offer. The Microsoft OneDrive offer of 1TB of storage included with Office 365 is a mirage, because the fine print of only 20,000 files able to be synced. Microsoft is trying to solve that problem (in how many years?) but in the mean time its 1TB is effectively only about 5-10GB of Office files. Dropbox will sync over 200,000 files. How many files will Amazon sync? Not clear.
 
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.

I asked Dreamhost about that a while back. Turns out almost nobody actually uses large amounts of space, for modern values of "large".

I would expect this to be slow, and on the back end to use erasure coding / FEC and deduplication.
 
Awesome. I still find OneDrive a better deal since you get Office365 with it for just a little more.

I ordered OneDrive too, thinking it was great, but it turned out not a good deal. There is a secret file limit of 20,000 files that can be synced, which is not publicized. That equals only 8GB of my Office files. Very disappointed and rather pissed at the disception. Dropbox will sync over 200,000 files.
 
Dropbox is best for ease of use, especially if people you need to collaborate with are bad at tech. Dropbox is my goto collaborator when dealing with people who are stupid at tech.

And many people are just terrible, it's really shocking. I want to punch people in the face when they tell me they "don't understand Onedrive," or don't know how to use Google Docs -- and I'm talking about simply logging in and establishing an account. Amazon servers, nope, most don't get it.
 
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.

Curious about how many here have tried Copy. I have 100GB free storage and have very few problems. What can you do with Dropbox that you can't with Copy?
 
'Unlimited' storage? Challenge accepted.

Hope this isn't like my 'Unlimited' bandwidth at my hosting provider or 'Unlimited' data my ISP promises.

Nothing is really 'Unlimited'...

Yep. The devil is in the details. Just looked at Amazon's website and they have a limit on file sizes and video length. 2 gig file size and 20 minute video length. I will stick with Google Drive. $10 per month for a terabyte of storage and the ability to upload unlimited length HD videos.

ztyz0ez.png
 
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Competition in distant (off site), large-to-unlimited storage is only a good thing. Hopefully the others respond and we find our way to:
-"time machine"-like options,
-with the safety of being truly off-site,
-by reliable players,
-for relatively cheap rates.

I hear Blackblaze does something like "Time machine" for $5 a month. I also think it's unlimited.
 
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.

lol...okay, tell that to the iOS 8 upgrade problems people had when they didn't have space to upgrade OTA. Here's something you need to learn about Apple, they are all about customer experience. Selling devices with low storage makes a crappy experience when the customer can't upgrade to the latest iOS (which creates fragmentation).

Apple could offer a 1TB iOS device but that keeping their base flagship at 16GBs (which is really 12.4GB out of the box, and not to mention 4.5GB of free space needed to update your OS) doesn't make sense.

Even Apple fan-boy John Gruber agrees with this: http://daringfireball.net/2014/10/ios_8_storage_space

With your Logic, Apple should continue making 4GB iPhones as a base model.
 
This is definitely the best deal. The Home version of 365 is truly unlimited, not just 1TB. And thats for 5 different users.

Are you in the US, because I have the home 365 version, and it is definitely 1TB per user. Even the MS Office 365 site says 1TB.
 
Meanwhile, over the pond...

Popular Plans
5 GB Free
20 GB £6 / year
50 GB £16 / year
Other Options
100 GB £32 / year
200 GB £64 / year
500 GB £160 / year
1000 GB £320 / year

https://www.amazon.co.uk/clouddrive/pricing?ref_=cd_home_plans_pricing

I can sort of understand why some things are US only, because of music licensing etc, but why this?
Same here in Germany...but given Amazons track record of taking a bit longer to get things done in Europe, I think if you give it a couple of months those options will probably be replaced with the new ones mentioned in the article...
 
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$12/year 5GB plan (with unlimited photos) is included for free on Amazon Prime. As far as I can tell, no discount for upgrading to $60/year unlimited plan.

Not anymore! Just got an email from Amazon stating my "free" 5GB plan is no longer available and that while I will be able to read files from my account, if I want to save files to it, I need to choose one of the pay-for plans!!

Thanks, Amazon. But it's really just principle for me...I don't use Amazon Cloud for anything...I'm on OneDrive now.
 
UK - unlimited photo storage included in Prime

It's now showing on the UK webpage, 5GB free or unlimited if you have a Prime subscription. I've tried to wean myself off Amazon & had let my Prime subscription lapse, this is a very tempting offer to get me back on their bus. I like the app which uploads Camera Roll automatically (like Dropbox does too).

I've avoided cloud photo backup so far to keep things clean on my iPhoto & Aperture libraries (backed up to NAS) but this offer, and the migration to Photos app might be the shove I need now.

Agree too that Apple cloud tiers / pricing look a bit stingy by comparison now, but I don't understand all the posts above implying that we're somehow 'owed' amazing & generous additional services from Apple because you happened to buy a phone or a laptop from them ... All of these companies are in business solely to make money for their shareholders, nobody is owed anything beyond what they chose to pay for on the day that they bought it.
 
Yea, but the problem with copy or Dropbox is that you actually have to have equal amount of space on your local drive. So even if you have the Dropbox 1TB plan, if you don't have the local space, you won't be able to take advantage of that.

Actually, Copy.com and Dropbox both offer selective sync (and have for quite some time), so you can upload a bunch of stuff to your account and not have it sync on your devices. I've uploaded nearly 20GB of stuff to Dropbox and deleted it from my Mac completely. I just set it to not sync, so it's there to download if I need it.
 
Just tried it out. I don't like it.

1. uploading is slow. and I am on a barely used 1Gb connection upstream (at work) and I was getting around a 1-2mb/sec.

2. unlike dropbox, this really isn't a "DRIVE" you can't mount it on your desktop, and it's terribly difficult to organize anything without going to their website.

3. I am certain they made it plenty difficult so you can't just use it as a remote drive. This is mostly just a place to archive stuff.

-=marc=-
 
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.

We use prime in our house but have zero need for amazon cloud storage. I hate bundling that make me pay for someone else's services.
 
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.

I'm currently using the app Arq to backup to Amazon's S3 servers, and I noticed the Arq dev. posted he is looking into supporting Amazon Cloud Drive in Arq. So for $60 a year you would have unlimited backup just using the Arq app.

If it works like it does now with S3, the app would interface directly through the Amazon Cloud Drive API, and you would not need the Amazon app installed. (I'm speculating this would be the case.)

8eyICCO.png
 
The Home Premium subscription is unlimited storage. It is an ongoing rollout process.

http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/27/onedrive-now-unlimited-storage-office-365-subscribers/

Yep. US here. Maybe that's the issue. Microsoft pushes out unlimited storage in 10TB increments (at least here anyway)

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/27/mi...-onedrive-storage-to-all-office-365-accounts/

I'm in the US, and my OneDrive still shows 1TB. It's been 5 months since the unlimited announcement. Not that I need it, but I wonder how long before it hits my account?
 
There's no desktop sync program for this right? That's the biggest show stopper for me. I don't feel comfortable storing everything in the cloud and not having a copy on my physical hard drive. That's why icloud photos makes more sense for me. Plus it's pretty much seamless.
 
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