1 Year Of Amazon Unlimited Online Storage For $5

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I don't know about you, but I think a full year of Amazon's unlimited online storage for only $5 could be the Cyber Monday deal of the day! Thanks to ccmfreak2 for the heads up.
 
And then the 2nd year rolls around and it's back to $60 so what happens then?

People needs to pick a backup site they like and stick with it to avoid the hassle of re-uploading the same files year after year.
 
Looks like this is a way to hook people into the cloud. If you're like me that feels there's a privacy concern about cloud storage, reading their requirements you will notice that unlimited storage is only for unencrypted files recognized as videos or pictures. If you encrypt your personal pictures or files, they will count towards storage quota. There are also file size requirements in which case long or HD videos may be too big (2GB max). After a year they probably hope people will upload a lot of crap into the cloud and then will have to pay full sub price.
 
I get the issues given, but for 5 bucks, it's worth a shot. I'm not very concerned about Amazon stealing my pictures. I might be a bit more concerned about sensitive documents. That said, I agree that they hope people will stick with it for 60 bucks (which is unlikely in my case).
 
zkostik said:
Looks like this is a way to hook people into the cloud. If you're like me that feels there's a privacy concern about cloud storage, reading their requirements you will notice that unlimited storage is only for unencrypted files recognized as videos or pictures. If you encrypt your personal pictures or files, they will count towards storage quota. There are also file size requirements in which case long or HD videos may be too big (2GB max). After a year they probably hope people will upload a lot of crap into the cloud and then will have to pay full sub price.
Click to expand...

Where does it say that at? All I see is 'Unlimited storage for photos, documents, and other files.' I know they have/had two plans, one with unlimited photos ($12) and unlimited 'everything' ($60). This appears to be the unlimited plan.

Not being argumentative, I know that lawyers can redefine 'unlimited' however they want, I just want to see the fine print you're talking about. $5 is a steal.
 
Interesting how they penalize you for encrypting. Are they are worried about pirates or do they want to analyze your data? Seems to me there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Where does it say that at? All I see is 'Unlimited storage for photos, documents, and other files.' I know they have/had two plans, one with unlimited photos ($12) and unlimited 'everything' ($60). This appears to be the unlimited plan.

Not being argumentative, I know that lawyers can redefine 'unlimited' however they want, I just want to see the fine print you're talking about. $5 is a steal.
Click to expand...

I don't see what the issue is. If you get unlimited you can encrypt. I believe the 2GB limit is for browser uploads only. Desktop client has no limit that I can see.

Existing users can't get the deal.
 
PeaKr said:
Interesting how they penalize you for encrypting. Are they are worried about pirates or do they want to analyze your data? Seems to me there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Click to expand...

It's not that they're penalizing, it's that encrypted files are more expensive because they can't dedupe.
 
snowcrash said:
And then the 2nd year rolls around and it's back to $60 so what happens then?

People needs to pick a backup site they like and stick with it to avoid the hassle of re-uploading the same files year after year.
Click to expand...


Sure, they certainly do need to stick with one, and many people will be sticking with Amazon as a result of this deal. Chances are I'll be one of them, but I've been in the market for a cloud storage option. This will give me a good chance to see how Amazon is compared to my free Google Drive option.

The market is finally getting to a point where cloud storage is a viable option to go for the average consumer. We're through much of the "early adopter" stages and are moving more and more into the main stream. Google's $10/month is ok for 1TB and decently competitive, but the Amazon $60/year ($5/month) for unlimited is REALLY attractive. Mix that with the fact you can try it today for a year for $5, then why not if you're already in the market?
 
SparkedFire said:
I don't see what the issue is. If you get unlimited you can encrypt. I believe the 2GB limit is for browser uploads only. Desktop client has no limit that I can see.
Click to expand...

Yeah. The TOS do give them the right to cancel your service if they feel you're using too much, but it doesn't say anything specifically about not allowing encryption.

I've been googling around and it looks like uploads from the desktop app will fail after 10GB or so. Better than 2GB, but not optimal.
 
snowcrash said:
And then the 2nd year rolls around and it's back to $60 so what happens then?

People needs to pick a backup site they like and stick with it to avoid the hassle of re-uploading the same files year after year.
Click to expand...

Same thing Samsung/Dropbox does with Galaxy phones. One year (or is it two?) of 50Gb storage for free. Get you hooked and then make a subscriber out of you.

Granted, 50Gb is a lot easier to move around.
 
Ok, I guess it's for new users only. Doesn't appear you can add it to an existing account.
 
good offer im sure the catch is that they catch you on renewal when you forget in a year, atleast with prime they have a stop autorenew, if they have that for this then its good
 
$9.99 per month for 1TB of Google Drive
$5 for the first year of Amazon Unlimited Cloud Drive and $60 per year ($5/mo.) afterwards.

Sold

Perfect for my client photos, video and website backup files.
 
Oh, and it doesn't include music storage. Stupid. Amazon could SIS stuff like that and it wouldn't hurt a bit.
 
WorldExclusive said:
$9.99 per month for 1TB of Google Drive
$5 for the first year of Amazon Unlimited Cloud Drive and $60 per year ($5/mo.) afterwards.

Sold

Perfect for my client photos, video and website backup files.
Click to expand...

It's almost better to pay $59 for a year of Office 365 and get a Terabyte of OneDrive.
 
TechLarry said:
It's almost better to pay $59 for a year of Office 365 and get a Terabyte of OneDrive.
Click to expand...


If they're dealing with media files for clients, I'm pretty sure they can burn through 1 TB relatively quickly. Even if they don't burn through it in the first year, a few years down the line 1 TB won't hold up well at all when you're dealing with mass photos and videos.
 
I'll stick with my unlimited Crashplan I got back in 2013. Yearly auto-renew at $63.47/year ($5.29/month) and almost 3 TB of data uploaded. Wouldn't want to have to try sending that all up to another company anyways.

The downside is that Crashplan has decided to stop supporting Solaris (and derivatives) so if I want to update my client I'll need to move to Linux from OpenIndiana. Unfortunately, I was hoping for some good 5TB internal HDD deals (non-Seagate) for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and that didn't seem to happen. Instead of just building with all new drives, it looks like I'll have to play the "data juggling" game of making sure all my data is backed up, pointing Plex and my drive mappings to the backup, building the new server, copying data back over, re-pointing Plex and drive mappings :(

Ah well.. gives me a reason to start doing some more file cleanup as well as adding a couple more folders (about another 500 GB worth) to my Crashplan backup. Gotta get it all uploaded as long as Comcast still has their caps suspended in my area :p
 
TechLarry said:
Oh, and it doesn't include music storage. Stupid. Amazon could SIS stuff like that and it wouldn't hurt a bit.
Click to expand...

Although Amazon's client is ridiculously basic, it selects Pictures, Documents, Videos, Music folders, so music is included.

Personally, I find it a bit silly that the app doesn't allow you to select folders.
I know i should probably use Windows' default folders for media, but I don't.

If you mean you can't stream music from this drive, that may be true. I don't use Amazon to stream most music (but anything I've bought from Amazon is available)
 
what's the fine print for year 2? is it 60/year every year after that?
 
Primary reason not to use their service is the desktop app is crap. If it is truly unlimited for $60/year that really isn't a bad deal, but the app is horrible.
 
zaniix said:
Primary reason not to use their service is the desktop app is crap. If it is truly unlimited for $60/year that really isn't a bad deal, but the app is horrible.
Click to expand...

Totally agree, though I did figure out how to upload different directories....not at all intuitive.
 
I can see this being useful for like small businesses and stuff, but for personal use, whatever. Go buy a USB stick or SD card, copy your stuff onto it and then if you're worried about like a fire or something, put it someplace not in your home. For me 16GB is more than enough space for all the files I care (and all the files I really don't care about too for that matter) and waiting for that much stuff to go upstream on a 768 kbps link or come back down on a 10 mbit path is longer than just driving to mommy's house to leave a copy of the few things I do wanna store there. Basically, stop hording data and think realistically about what you really need to keep instead of inventing a storage problem that needs a stupid offsite subscription service to maintain.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I can see this being useful for like small businesses and stuff, but for personal use, whatever. Go buy a USB stick or SD card, copy your stuff onto it and then if you're worried about like a fire or something, put it someplace not in your home. For me 16GB is more than enough space for all the files I care (and all the files I really don't care about too for that matter) and waiting for that much stuff to go upstream on a 768 kbps link or come back down on a 10 mbit path is longer than just driving to mommy's house to leave a copy of the few things I do wanna store there. Basically, stop hording data and think realistically about what you really need to keep instead of inventing a storage problem that needs a stupid offsite subscription service to maintain.
Click to expand...

Cloud is a continuous offsite backup. Your solution (one I've proposed to some friends) is not. It's fine if you don't care about stuff you did in the past week and there's not a natural disaster that wipes out your offsite storage.

I'm going to try this for now, but I"m almost certainly going to switch to a cloud backup of some type in the next year.
 
So I'm uploading a couple of TB of photos and it looks like the upload rate is around 11 Mbps. Not great, but it'll get it done eventually. Are other services are much faster?
 
I can tell you Crashplan is not faster. About the fastest I've ever gotten is 5Mbps on a 6 Mbps upload via Comcast. Most of the time it hovers between 3-3.5 Mbps.

Just as a side-note since I posted earlier that I was happy with Crashplan... while I still plan to use it I just found out that I haven't had a good backup since June. The "set and forget" approach I was taking and relying on their reports obviously wasn't working (part my fault for not checking). Their basic email report, for example, said "last backed up 8 minutes ago" but when I looked at my server it was still processing. Digging into the restore options, it appears it hadn't actually completed a backup since June :eek:

Needless to say, it is a good thing Comcast still has their datacap suspended in Houston. I've chewed through about 200GB of bandwidth since the first of the month already, but I've almost got everything caught up.
 
farscapesg1 said:
I can tell you Crashplan is not faster. About the fastest I've ever gotten is 5Mbps on a 6 Mbps upload via Comcast. Most of the time it hovers between 3-3.5 Mbps.

Just as a side-note since I posted earlier that I was happy with Crashplan... while I still plan to use it I just found out that I haven't had a good backup since June. The "set and forget" approach I was taking and relying on their reports obviously wasn't working (part my fault for not checking). Their basic email report, for example, said "last backed up 8 minutes ago" but when I looked at my server it was still processing. Digging into the restore options, it appears it hadn't actually completed a backup since June :eek:

Needless to say, it is a good thing Comcast still has their datacap suspended in Houston. I've chewed through about 200GB of bandwidth since the first of the month already, but I've almost got everything caught up.
Click to expand...

Backing up to a remote server you own or to Crashplan's server? If it's the latter, tha'ts not good. My folks use Carbonite, and it just works. For a cloud backup, I think that's a minimum requirement.
 
I'm backing up to their storage (unlimited), not locally. I do local copies of my storage server to a secondary server (HP N45L) and a local Drobo Pro unit my work was throwing out. A little overboard :p That's also why I really took a set and forget approach to my online backup and just noticed the issues. Honestly, I think the issue is because my storage server is running OpenIndiana and Crashplan dropped their Solaris support. Should technically still work since the backup client hasn't been updated from v. 3.7, but since there isn't any support anyways, this finally forced me to move it off to a separate VM and I just have to go through the process to adopt the previous backed-up files. Doing that in chunks to make sure it doesn't back up existing files and just added the final folders today.
 
nilepez said:
Cloud is a continuous offsite backup. Your solution (one I've proposed to some friends) is not. It's fine if you don't care about stuff you did in the past week and there's not a natural disaster that wipes out your offsite storage.

I'm going to try this for now, but I"m almost certainly going to switch to a cloud backup of some type in the next year.
Click to expand...

Well the average person values junk data waaaaay too much anyway and wants to backup a bunch of stupid things that don't matter instead of just being more realistic about what they store and how much value it adds to their lives to spend whatever amount of money it requires to do so....which was the point of my post and that's why I ended it with this thing-y:

Basically, stop hording data and think realistically about what you really need to keep instead of inventing a storage problem that needs a stupid offsite subscription service to maintain.
Click to expand...

Cause usually people read like the first and last lines and those are the ones that stick with them in a paragraph. It's totally why you put your most powerful stuff there when you're trying to make a point.
 
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