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Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans 122

Posted by samzenpus from the in-the-clouds dept.
An anonymous reader sends word that Amazon is now offering unlimited cloud storage plans to compete with Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. "Last year, Amazon gave a boost to its Prime members when it launched a free, unlimited photo storage for them on Cloud Drive. Today, the company is expanding that service as a paid offering to cover other kinds of content, and to users outside of its loyalty program. Unlimited Cloud Storage will let users get either unlimited photo storage or "unlimited everything" — covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents — respectively for $11.99 or $59.99 per year."
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Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans More

Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans

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  • MY data in AMAZON's cloud ?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vikingpower ( 768921 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @05:34AM (#49352655) Homepage Journal
    Never. Never ever. I run a couple of servers here at home, and have my own 30 TB cloud. Pricing model: simple. I buy used servers, at about e 300 apiece, and stick in new hdds. For 30 TB and a three-year write-off, that is € 625 / year. Expensive ? Yes. But what I get is priceless: total control

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Three year write-off? Is that not too short?
      https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
      This was mentioned on slashdot many months ago. It is data on hard disk failures released by backblaze, a cloud backup service.

      • From a hardware point of view, yes, that is too short. Hdds last longer than that - and I am familiar with the post mentioned by you. But my tax advisor, who also does all of my accounting, leaves me no choice but to ( financially ) write them off in 3 years.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      and you're running other servers off-site ? ..because you know, a fire, a burglar, some kind of accident and your data is lost...

      • For DIY offsite backup I use crashplan. Their system lets you use their servers if you choose (for payment) but it also lets you use a remote disk you have over at a freinds house too, or one attached to your computer. I bought their software after using the free version for years. Besides being a nice automated backup system, the killer thing was the ability to backup offsite to a friends house. I do it mutually with them, each keeping the other's USB disk at our respective homes.

        What's great about th

    • Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Friday March 27, 2015 @06:14AM (#49352765)

      "But what I get is priceless: total control"

      Unless there's a fire, a break-in, an earthquake, a tsunami...
      Or do you also have backups all over the world? After all, you pay 10 times the Amazon price.

      • Fire: the data is partitioned into two categories: one I can afford to lose, and one I can't afford to lose ( source code, personal stuff, financial stuff ). The latter category is by far the smallest in size, currently about 100 Gb. I run a backup once per week, and keep those backups in another location. Break-in: very difficult in this place, but not impossible. I would, however, doubt that any burglars would take servers with them ( burglars are known to take only light and easy-to-carry stuff ). There

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        Total control doesn't mean perfection. He has total control. His actions control the fate and risks of the drives 100%. There is no risk outsourced to a 3rd party entity.

        • Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ?? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by vikingpower ( 768921 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @08:50AM (#49353337) Homepage Journal
          True. I don't outsource any risk. Did you ever read "The Orange Book", on risk management ? It is a British government document, and considered rather as a classic on the topic. The TL;DR version: you only outsource risks if and when there are no new risks attached to the act of outsourcing itself. In my case, I consider there would be such extra risk: Amazon is a corporation I can't control, and it can change its policies any time. ( Please do note I do not even mention the NSA and the US state. There certainly is risk there, but I have no way of quantifying it. ) Moreover, once my data is with Amazon, getting it away from there ( if I ever want to do that ) becomes a guarantee for severe headaches, and in that case I would end up building my own cloud anyway.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dave420 ( 699308 )
            It's not really your own cloud, just a centralised bunch of disks with a poor backup system. Getting your data from Amazon is easy, obviously, as that's the whole point. I've been using them for years and never had problems in that regard. Couple that with encryption, and you can take the benefits of Amazon's system (low cost, geographical spread, high availability, high speeds) without the down-sides. You can also couple Amazon's offerings with their virtual machines, something you can't do with your a

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            You are wrong. Amazon is a greater risk because there are more known unknowns and unknown unknowns. They can build a cloud. If I build my own, I can specify the MTBF myself. I can spec higher or lower equipment. Same reason why building my own PC is a lower risk. Rather than unknown components, I can specify specific components. This modifies risk.

            Your stupid assertion is that risk is the same if you can't prove the risk is different. By that standard, parachuting without a chute is no more risky t

          • Chuckle.

            No need to quantify the NSA problem. It's a US based company, therefore any data stored within their cloud really just needs to be heavily encrypted by default. It's not even really a discussion point anymore, just one of those things you do.

            Though, to be fair, as long as your country allows it, all data should probably be encrypted regardless of where it is stored if it has any value whatsoever.

          • No, you make the move if:

            r_cl r_l and
            C_clo C_l

            Where r_l/r_cl = risk of catastrophic loss on local config/cloud config, similar for the costs.

            You can calculate the cost of keeping production and migration systems running for a migration and shakedown period, as well as the risk/cost benefit of continuing the migration or shutting it down at any point. As such, one can estimate these costs and there are some points in the mathematical domain where it makes sense to migrate.

            However, I believe that we would s

      • Unless there's a fire, a break-in, an earthquake, a tsunami...
        Or do you also have backups all over the world?

        Amazon also had incidents where natural disasters or human failure led to data loss for business customers, so I doubt they have distributed backups for 100% of the data.

      • What people need to realize is that rolling your own data storage solution increases the risk of being hacked, losing data due to disasters, or losing remote access to files due to stupid crap like a router dying. If you're just using a NAS to store your porn, then that's fine. You'll just torrent the files back again. BUT if you are talking about pictures from your childhood, business files, or other critical documents, you seriously need to consider if you have a sufficient backup policy with off-site sto

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      The electricity cost is what's so painful. I have an old Intel Q6600 system with 4x1TB disks. Power consumption is something like 110 watts, or $11/month.

      I could swap the drives out and keep power about the same, but at some point it becomes kind of expensive to keep spinning disks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        You do realize that you can turn them off sometimes, right?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          Sure, and I could also hotplug USB3 disks and cut even more power/space/complexity if I wanted to futz with turning it on and off.

          Power cycling a NAS may be worthwhile if it's some kind of archive you don't use often but it doesn't make a ton of sense if you want it online more than offline.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            Then use a 5W CPU and set the disks to spin down after inactivity. Your argument only holds if the disks are spinning 100% of the time, which is only true if you have an incompetent idiot setting up your power-sensitive NAS, or are actually using it 100% of the time.
    • What's your offsite backup method to protect against fires?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dave420 ( 699308 )
      So your time is free? With encryption it doesn't matter who gets a copy of your files, making your "total control" argument seem rather silly. And you only end up with 30TB as well. Ouch.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Krojack ( 575051 )

      That's fine and dandy for you who seem to have the time to manage the systems. You're just one of the extreme few in the world that's willing to do this. Your average person can't do this or doesn't have the time. I use to love building these systems in my younger days but now I don't have the time to do it. I would rather update my data in an encrypted state to some servers that I know have countless forums of redundancy.

  • Encrypt client side (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Can we get that data encrypted client side with a third party Dropbox-like app?

    • Based on their API reference [amazon.com] 3rd-party apps that do whatever you want on the client side certainly look doable enough.

      Obviously, the various stuff about "Access your files on all your devices!" and "Build into all your Amazon devices!" and whatnot is going to be less useful, so they are clearly expecting most customers to not do that(and implicitly encouraging them not to); but the service itself doesn't appear to have any objections to you dropping encrypted blobs into it.

      (Now, what Amazon would do i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        Based on their API reference [amazon.com] [amazon.com] 3rd-party apps that do whatever you want on the client side certainly look doable enough.

        The downside is that it doesn't appear to support block-level file changes -- you can only create or overwrite an entire file at once. This means that storing something like a 50GB TrueCrypt volume isn't really feasible and you'd have to encrypt all your files individually. This is more difficult and more prone to mistakes.

        Hopefully they expand the API at some point to allow binary delta updates of some kind, but their omission could have been a conscious decision to try and discourage people from storing

        • I'm sure that they've given considerable thought to subtly discouraging very heavy use, and looked at how different users actually tend to use online storage space, along with how much opportunity for additional profit there might be(eg. a 'photo storage' user might be a good candidate for being sold prints or something, while a 'generic files' user might not); and I imagine that lack of block level control helps. It would be interesting to know what the number-crunching looked like to arrive at those price

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You could run a OwnCloud server, with own storage, and then clone the client side encrypted data to Amazon, as a remote backup in case the OwnCloud server fries, burns down with your house, gets stolen, or confiscated by authorities. Lots of ways to do that. Personally I use a Rasp 2 and a RAID USB enclosure.

      I don't clone to a remote place yet, but I would like to. If my house burns down, I would like to not loose my data too - it would be horrible enough to loose my physical possessions. I've lost 15 years

  • unlimited? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ei4anb ( 625481 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @06:23AM (#49352791)
    I wonder if Kim Dotcom has an account yet?

  • Ehhhhhhhhcellent! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @06:36AM (#49352827)
    Now I have somewhere to put my advertised "unlimited retension" Usenet servers!

  • Link to the official announcement? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @06:39AM (#49352835) Homepage

    Why do people link to blog posts that neglect to link to the original source?

    A little digging, and it seems on the surface to have similar restrictions as BackBlaze, as it's only for "for personal, non-commercial purposes" [amazon.com].

    So I can't store my ~3PB of telescope data on there, or even just the jpeg browse images.

    The terms of use mention that you can share files .. but do they charge you for downloads, as with their other cloud service offerings, or is that included in the 'unlimited'?

      (I might be an old fogey, but I remember when you used to link to a blog post to set context *and* link to the original source in the summary, rather than just some shallow 'I've cherry picked the info'. At least Roland and Coondoggie linked back to their original sources, even if Coondoggies were almost exclusively regurgitation of press releases + a links back to Network World))

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      So I can't store my ~3PB of telescope data on there, or even just the jpeg browse images.

      I read it as -- I can store my 3PB of telescope data, but I can't store your 3PB of telescope data on there. But realistically, I have no expectation of them honoring it like this... they probably go like the Microsoft way... http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-limits-of-unlimited-onedrive-storage/

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Other providers like Tencent are offering a few terabytes for free, so the only real reason to pay Amazon is for their guaranteed service level... Which appears to be non-existent. So, I'm not sure why you would pay $60/year for this.

      I like having unlimited on-line encrypted backups. If good software is available that supports Amazon I suppose that would be a selling point.

  • linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kharchenko ( 303729 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @06:43AM (#49352849)

    Will they have a linux client?

  • Yeah, no thanks Amazon, I'll stick to my own NAS. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hack slash ( 1064002 ) on Friday March 27, 2015 @07:49AM (#49353063)
    "We may change, suspend or discontinue the Service, or any part of it, at any time without notice."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jafiwam ( 310805 )

      "We may change, suspend or discontinue the Service, or any part of it, at any time without notice."

      Google has that problem too. And they have a long track record of abruptly killing services.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by qvatch ( 576224 )
        they have at least given quite a bit of notice (of the shutdown date, not the intention) and allowed bulk export of your data. But yes, how hard would it be to at least give a minimum warning garantee?

      • If by "abruptly" you mean "with plenty of notice and a straightforward way to download all of your old data".

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That is why Amazon should be treated as a backup, not primary storage.

  • Guess I better move to Europe.

  • The aggravating part is that the free 5GB you used to have is gone now (source: email). All I wanted it for is Kindle document storage, which is unavailable at the $12/year level. It looks like I have to pay $60/year to store a few books.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mcgett ( 891257 )
      You must have missed the part where the $11.99/year unlimited photos plan includes 5GB for videos and documents.

      • Oh yeah guess I did.

        Still, I only want a few hundred MB for mobi files (maybe less than a hundred). That's all I will make use of in the plan... I know its only $1 a month but unless they integrate with pretty much everything, I will still need another cloud plan.

    • The 5GB is still there:

      +5 GB to Store Videos and Files
      As part of the Unlimited Photos plan, you'll also get 5 GB of space free to store non-photo files (like videos).

  • Terms (Score:1)

    by carni ( 710219 )
    You may not share files (a) that contain defamatory, threatening, abusive, pornographic, or otherwise objectionable material, (b) that advocate bigotry, hatred, or illegal discrimination. "Otherwise objectionable"? "Advocate bigotry"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PRMan ( 959735 )
      Mega had no such terms, since they have no way of enforcing them anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Art3x ( 973401 )
      In Springfield, Missouri, there was a law that your car music must not be heard more than 15 feet away, or something like that. Almost never enforced but useful against someone blaring their heavy-bass car stereo. Overly broad rules seldom enforced are common. In the hands of a scrupulous cop, they are convenient and don't really harm anyone. In the hands of someone unscrupulous person, a broad or vague law is dangerous. But then again, just about any law, no matter how well worded, can be misused by someo
    • You know, you should really be a bigot. *click*
  • I find the price difference for storing more than just images to be pretty steep. Wouldn't it save money to use stenography to store your files inside of some images so you could get around their stupid rule? You could even up the amount of data storage inside the image since you don't really care if the image looks good afterwords. Just have the file name and structure of an image would work even though it looks like static or something. Then you run them through a program that extracts all the files and i

    • Or, you could just pay the sixty bucks.

      PS It's steganography. Stenography is for taking dictation.

    • I find the price difference for storing more than just images to be pretty steep. Wouldn't it save money to use stenography to store your files inside of some images so you could get around their stupid rule?

      It's not a stupid rule. Pictures are small, so they can guess that the storage use of your "all-you-can-store" buffet will be smaller. The fact that it breaks down in edge cases isn't terribly relevant.,/p>

  • I was all set to pull the trigger with Amazon and sign up for the $60/ unlimited. Lots of family pictures and videos that would now be accessable to my family all over the world.. But then I thought..... won't Google adjust it's pricing?
  • I tried to sign up for the trial but only got the 5gb free plan. When I sent them an enquiry about this I got this slightly odd reply: "I regret to inform you that this feature is not yet available in Amazon.com.au. Amazon.com.au does not comment about rumours or speculative news reports. I can't provide any additional information on this issue. I hope this helps." Well, no, Amazon, not really...

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