Amazon Cloud: I am looking for another backup for my photos and movies. Has anyone used the Amazon Cloud service? Comments good and bad will be appreciated. Thanks.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

I am looking for another backup for my photos and movies. Has anyone used the Amazon Cloud service? Comments good and bad will be appreciated. Thanks.

chapjohn Loc: Tigard, Oregon

I use Amazon cloud for Photos. I have a little more than 300 GB of photos there. at $12 a year for unlimited photos (each image has to be less than 2 GB) it is a good deal. You also get 5 GB for videos. I do not have videos so I can't tell you about that part.

amazon cloud shows you thumbnail jpeg images you have stored there. However, RAW images are not seen, but the information for RAW image is there, but the thumbnail of that image is not seen.

Remember Amazon cloud is storage not drive like google drive or dropbox. Once your images are uploaded they are there and you can download images to use and the original is still on Amazon.

Amazon has a good privacy statement. They are not claiming any rights or usage of your images.

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

MikeMcK wrote:

I am looking for another backup for my photos and movies. Has anyone used the Amazon Cloud service? Comments good and bad will be appreciated. Thanks.

I use it. I like it but the offer for "unlimited" storage for Prime members is not exactly true.
I started uploading and after, I don't know how many, gigabytes there was a popup that said I had reached my limit. Believe it was unlimited, I uploaded all my images (up to their "unlimited" limit) both processed and unprocessed and even duds. I think I had about 72,000 images.
I'm in the process of culling out my unPPed images and duds to make room for more. I'm down to about 55,000.
It's pretty user friendly, especially if you use their Amazon Cloud uploader that sits on your desktop.
All in all, for $99 a year with free shipping and "unlimited but limited" storage it's not a bad deal at all.
Can I answer any other questions for you?

Rongnongno Loc: FL

I have still not understood the point of cloud storage unless you need your captures world wide.

The storage is not safer and it takes time to stuff in and out of there.

That said, you can always use an ISP to rent your own space. I have unlimited ANYTHING on my server from space to domains to e-mails to... Just space galore to fill.

The cost is about $245 for two years, paid every two years (best deal). You need not to have a domain to use this, just a FTP account.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Can I answer any other questions for you?[/quote]

Is the Amazon Cloud a manual upload. In other words, can it tell if the image has already been uploaded? Some backup systems run in the background and only upload files that have not been previously uploaded. Thanks.

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

MikeMcK wrote:

Can I answer any other questions for you?

Is the Amazon Cloud a manual upload. In other words, can it tell if the image has already been uploaded? Some backup systems run in the background and only upload files that have not been previously uploaded. Thanks.[/quote]

I don't think so. I'm almost certain. In cleaning out my unwanted files I've been deleting lots of duplicates.
BTW I just checked and I think I misinterpreted their "unlimited policy." I think it IS UNLIMITED for images only, but in uploading I also included videos and other files. I think if I eliminate the videos and other files I'll be able to continue unlimited.

"...only upload files that have not been previously uploaded..."

I think my SmugMug uploader does this.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thanks. I already have a service called Backblaze which is continually backing up everything on my C: drive. I am after a backup to my backup. I am a little OCD, in case you couldn't tell. The photos I want to protect involve my 6 year old grandson playing hockey. He is the little guy sitting on Santa's lap (me) . Thanks again!

bioteacher Loc: Brooklyn, NY

chapjohn wrote:

I use Amazon cloud for Photos. I have a little mo... (show quote)

However, Amazon limits the amount of RAW files as RAW files have boxcars of info. therefore, you are limited in the number of RAw files, but not other formats.

bcmink Loc: Monona, WI

For what its worth: Amazon's storage and hosting service have a stellar record for security and reliability. The annual storage price is comparable to competitors if not less expensive. My son has been the chief of software engineering for Air America, Huffington Post and now BuzzFeed. He's used Amazon hosting for all three of those organizations and has never lost a single bit of data. The building he's housed in Manhattan was flooded a number of years ago and his distribution server was destroyed. Amazon was able to completely reconstruct a mirrored host and site within hours and over the course of a couple days reconstructed the contents of his storage arrays without losing a single bit of data. So, thumbs up to Amazon Hosting and Storage services. I've used the storage service for many years.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Thanks, that's quite an endorsement.

Roger Lee

Why not just use Flickr?

Last I checked you get 1tb of free storage for your photos and videos.

bcmink Loc: Monona, WI

bioteacher wrote:

However, Amazon limits the amount of RAW files as RAW files have boxcars of info. therefore, you are limited in the number of RAw files, but not other formats.

Supported RAW File Types
The following RAW photo files from the following camera models are recognized by Amazon Cloud Drive as a photo file; however, this is not a definitive list:

Nikon (NEF files) Nikon D1, Nikon D1X, Nikon D4, Nikon Coolpix A, Nikon E5700, Nikon AW1, Nikon D800, Nikon D50, Nikon D610
Canon (CR2 Files) Canon 5D, Canon 1D, Canon 1D MarkIIN, Canon Rebel SL1, Canon 60D, Canon 5D MarkIII, Canon 1D MarkIV
Sony (ARW files) Sony A7, Sony A7R, Sony A6000, Sony NEX-5T, Sony NEX-3N, Sony NEX-6

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

MikeMcK wrote:

Thanks. I already have a service called Backblaze which is continually backing up everything on my C: drive. I am after a backup to my backup. I am a little OCD, in case you couldn't tell. The photos I want to protect involve my 6 year old grandson playing hockey. He is the little guy sitting on Santa's lap (me) . Thanks again!

I don't think one is OCD to backup your backups.
In my early days computing, when hard drives were in MBs and not very reliable, I started using an Exel spreadsheet for my finances. I can't tell you how many times I've lost all my financial information because my hard drives crashed. Took me a while to learn my lesson and back up to floppy disks and later a second internal HD.
Oh yes, I also clone my main drive once a week.
Now, I back up my photos to 3 HDs, Amazon Cloud, and SmugMug.
My financial data is backed up to my 2.5 GB, my 3.0 GB, a flash drive, alas Onedrive, and finally my desktop.

papakatz45 Loc: South Florida-West Palm Beach

Rongnongno wrote:

I have still not understood the point of cloud storage unless you need your captures world wide.

The storage is not safer and it takes time to stuff in and out of there.

That said, you can always use an ISP to rent your own space. I have unlimited ANYTHING on my server from space to domains to e-mails to... Just space galore to fill.

The cost is about $245 for two years, paid every two years (best deal). You need not to have a domain to use this, just a FTP account.

Cloud storage is only one part of a backup strategy. I continuously backup to a server, once a day to external hard drive and continuously to Carbonite in the cloud. If the building burns down or we get a hurricane (south Florida) I can log on to the cloud and everything is safe.

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

MikeMcK wrote:

I am looking for another backup for my photos and movies. Has anyone used the Amazon Cloud service? Comments good and bad will be appreciated. Thanks.

I don't use anything "cloud"... I guess I don't trust having anything of mine out there where almost anyone in the
cloud host can get to it. Call me paranoid but that's the way I feel.