Amazon Cloud Storage Announced

[Dave Gurtcheff]

I just saw Amazon is offering unlimited photo storage at $11.99 per year. Like many here, I started making double back up CDs for my digital photo files. Then the files became too large, so I switched to dual  DVDs, then dual Blu Ray discs. Now I use dual portable hard drives. As I fill up a pair, I store one off site and the other at my home office. The press release says you can upload existing collections, and also store as you create them. Any ideas if this sounds OK? I cannot imagine trying to read and upload all my CDs, DVDs, and Blu Ray discs, as I would have to do them one at a time (I have a ton of them). But the filled  portable hard drives might not be too bad, as I assume I could walk away as the files are being up loaded. Any caveats? Ideas, suggestions welcome!
Thanks all
Dave in NJ
PS: Not sure where to post this.

[Jim Kasson]

I just saw Amazon is offering unlimited photo storage at $11.99 per year. Like many here, I started making double back up CDs for my digital photo files. Then the files became too large, so I switched to dual  DVDs, then dual Blu Ray discs. Now I use dual portable hard drives. As I fill up a pair, I store one off site and the other at my home office. The press release says you can upload existing collections, and also store as you create them. Any ideas if this sounds OK? I cannot imagine trying to read and upload all my CDs, DVDs, and Blu Ray discs, as I would have to do them one at a time (I have a ton of them). But the filled  portable hard drives might not be too bad, as I assume I could walk away as the files are being up loaded. Any caveats? Ideas, suggestions welcome!
Thanks all
Dave in NJ
PS: Not sure where to post this.

This, and the Amazon Everything plan announced at the same time, apparently have the same restrictions as the old CloudDrive, which are dealbreakers for me. You have to use the Amazon client. You can't use third-party clients like GoodSync or Vice-Versa. Amazon has asked the third part companies to stop uploading to CloudDrive in the past, and, to my knowledge, they have all complied. The Amazon client won't support high speed (50 Mb/s) Internet connections at full speed, although S3 works at nearly that speed. Their limit is about 30 Mb/s, which isn't bad at all. The Amazon CloudDrive client will only autosync only one local folder (and all subfolders).

I'm not clear on whether or not there's a 2GB file size limit now.

I would be delighted to be in error on any of the above.

Jim

[digitaldog]

This, and the Amazon Everything plan announced at the same time, apparently have the same restrictions as the old CloudDrive, which are dealbreakers for me.
I'm not clear on whether or not there's a 2GB file size limit now.

Me too. It seems like bate and switch, marketing speak and it is unclear. While it cost more, the unlimited storage options in CrashPlan have worked perfectly for me the last two years and I'm not going to re-upload hundreds of gig's to Amazon at this point.

[rdonson]

Me too. It seems like bate and switch, marketing speak and it is unclear. While it cost more, the unlimited storage options in CrashPlan have worked perfectly for me the last two years and I'm not going to re-upload hundreds of gig's to Amazon at this point.

I've used the Amazon offering for 4 years now.  I use it in specific cases.  It is NOT a backup solution.  The UI is a simple drag and drop.  It should NOT be considered as a replacement for BackBlaze, CrashPlan, etc. 

I also use MS SkyDrive.  The UI experience is MUCH better than Amazon but again it is NOT a substitute for a real backup solution.

[Some Guy]

Can't use it here.  DSL is way too slow here to try and upload a 2TB hard-drive to a Cloud of any sort.  It would take weeks.  Even a recent 4.7GB download last week took 4 hours (Garmin map updates).  Upload speed is a fraction of the download here.  As TIFF and RAW files grow, the data transmission isn't keeping up to make it practical.  That or go to a much higher data cell-net plan over internet.

Also, I got a gut feeling any photos you upload may become a data mining and/or marketing income for the Cloud owners.  You take studio shots, so you need flash units from the venders on their list they sell too, etc.  Cell phone EXIF and you need a new cell phone made by X on your next rollover.  Some of the spam I get seems very directed now.

Plus, there is the issue that it may not last forever.  Happened to Kodak in the 90's when they first tried their Cloud photo storage idea.  Then got the notice to "Get it all back before it is gone" and so much for Kodak's Cloud.  Imagine having to retrieve TB's of image data if they shut down the service.

SG

[Dave Gurtcheff]

Thanks all for your intelligent ideas and thoughts. It may be a "winter time" project to recopy all my CDS, DVDs and Blu Rays to portable hard drives (two of them). Fortunately I have two copies of each disk, and on occasion I get a print order of an older image, and the disc is corrupted. The second disk has saved me. When that happens, I copy the file to two portable hard drives.

Best regards

Dave in NJ