Do you need an off-site storage solution?
Well, let me ask the question a different way… If your house burned down tomorrow, would you lose all those pictures you took with your digital camera?
Amazon may have the answer you are looking for. Or not.
Recently, Amazon announced their ‘Cloud Drive,’ which is a way to store your important files at a secure location outside your home. And the first 5GB of drive space is FREE! All you need is an Internet connection and an Amazon user account (which you may already have if you have bought anything from Amazon.com).
Go to the website https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore to read about it.
Basically, it looks and works similar to a hard drive when it comes to copying files – but you must use the Amazon web interface to do so. You cannot save your work files there straight from programs like Word or Excel, and you can only open certain file types directly. For example, you can listen to MP3 files by using Amazon’s Cloud Player, or view pictures and PDF files just by clicking on them. But you cannot directly use or view an Access database stored on the Cloud Drive! In those cases, you must to first copy the file to your PC and then open the local copy.
Mass copying of files can at times be cumbersome. You cannot copy multiple subdirectories at once – only the files within them. You must to create your folder structure manually (one directory at a time). Amazon gets you started by having four top level folders by default, but you can create your own folders and subdirectories at will.
So what are the limitations? For starters, only the first 5GB of starage is free. After that, you must pay $1 per GB per year, which will be automatically charged to your credit card. So, if you have 1TB of files to store, you should probably spend $100 for an external hard disk rather than shell out $1000 to Amazon every year.
But if you have less than 5GB of files you need backed up securely, or want to be able to view your pictures from a library computer, Amazon Cloud Drive might be just the answer you were looking for.
1 comment:
I get really, really nervous about placing my files in someone else's hands--especially when they offer to do it for free. It's not the convenience, or even technical, aspects that bother me. But security? Privacy? Are we supposed to just trust that Amazon won't be sniffing through our stuff whenever they feel like it?
What happens when the RIAA or MPAA decides to strong arm Amazon because they "know" many Amazon users are hiding their illicit downloads there?
Or what about when Amazon decides they don't like the content we're storing? They've been known to forcefully delete previously and legally purchased products from their Kindle devices because someone else objected to the material. I'd hate to see that happen to personal data.
Cloud computing is going to become more and more prevalent. It seems like natural progression. But it also seems like this is a very dangerous road...
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