Amazon ends 'Unlimited Storage' plan

[Miramonti]

Not much of a surprise here, two years of anticipation fulfilled. And if Amazon can't do it, can others expect to turn a profit on it?

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/amazon-ends-its-unlimited-cloud-storage-plan/

From today, people signing up for Amazon Drive will not be able to select an unlimited cloud storage option. Instead they can choose either 100 GB for $11.99 per year, or 1 TB for $59.99, with up to 30 TB available for an additional $59.99 per TB. (The prior pricing was $11.99pa for unlimited photos or unlimited everything for $59.99.)

...
While those with auto-renew turned off, or who have more than 1TB stored, will have to visit the Manage Storage page to opt in to one of the new limited storage plans.

Those who don’t take action to switch to a new plan — and who are storing more data than their free storage quota — will find their account in “over-quota status” once their subscription expires, meaning they won’t be able to upload additional files, and can only view, download, and delete content.

Amazon says users in this position will have 180 days to either delete content to bring their total content within the free quota or else sign up for a paid storage plan. After 180 days, the company will delete data automatically to get the account back within quota — starting with the most recent uploads first. (You can read Amazon’s Data Retention Policy here.)

While Prime members don’t have to worry about their photo storage, which continues to be unlimited, non-photo content can be considered over-quota even for Prime members — so these Amazon customers may still need to take action to save some of their data.

Amazon notes that Drive users can change their plan at any time. While files from Drive can be downloaded to a computer using the Amazon Drive Desktop Application.

 

[dainthomas]

That was an incredibly good deal before. No shock they couldn't make it work at that price.

Good thing all I care about are my photo uploads.

 

[clamum]

Hmmm. I don't use Amazon Drive nor Google Drive. I started with Dropbox due to others at a new job recommending it in 2012 and have used it since; I love it.

But I do have Amazon Prime so I was thinking of uploading my photos there, just as a backup, but haven't done so yet. I hardly take photos these days so it might just make more sense to back them up myself, to a DVD for example. It's not like I need access to them from any device at any time.

 

[IronWing]

Clouds used to be free.

 

[dainthomas]

Hmmm. I don't use Amazon Drive nor Google Drive. I started with Dropbox due to others at a new job recommending it in 2012 and have used it since; I love it.

But I do have Amazon Prime so I was thinking of uploading my photos there, just as a backup, but haven't done so yet. I hardly take photos these days so it might just make more sense to back them up myself, to a DVD for example. It's not like I need access to them from any device at any time.

I use both Amazon and Google. They're both seamless (all photos are backed up when you take them, although you can adjust this in settings). Amazon is good because it gives me reminders of photos I've taken this date in previous years, which I enjoy. I can also view them on my Fire Stick. Google is nice because it will randomly organize pictures I've taken into albums (which I can choose to save or not). It will also organize pictures by facial recognition (which you have to opt into I believe).

Either way, it's reassuring knowing if my phone gets lost/demolished all those are backed up in two different locations.

 

[mnewsham]

It's because you had people over on r/datahoarder with over 1PB on their unlimited accounts.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's because you had people over on r/datahoarder with over 1PB on their unlimited accounts.

That's a lot of porn...

 

[IronWing]

It's because you had people over on r/datahoarder with over 1PB on their unlimited accounts.

I don't get it. I'm a bit of a file hoarder and take lots of pics (though very little video) and have lots of music. I have accumulated maybe 2-2.5 TB of data total. When I finish re-rippping all my CDs to lossless, I'll have maybe 4 TB of data. Are these folks just grabbing and loading files just to do it?

 

[cfenton]

I'd be pretty pissed if I'd switched from Crashplan or Backblaze to Amazon. It takes a long time to upload several TBs of data. Not to mention bandwidth caps that might make it expensive to retrieve your data from Amazon to move to another provider.

It's because you had people over on r/datahoarder with over 1PB on their unlimited accounts.

If that's the concern, they could have reduced the limit to something more reasonable, say 10TB, or even 5TB, rather than going all the way down to 1TB. Now their advantage over Google and Microsoft is much smaller in terms of price, and they have (I think) significantly worse software and web tools.

 

[mnewsham]

I don't get it. I'm a bit of a file hoarder and take lots of pics (though very little video) and have lots of music. I have accumulated maybe 2-2.5 TB of data total. When I finish re-rippping all my CDs to lossless, I'll have maybe 4 TB of data. Are these folks just grabbing and loading files just to do it?

I believe that example in particular is someone archiving bulk webcam live streams.
Though I know several people with media archives breaking 60TB, my own house is currently sitting at ~45TB of storage with ~25-30TB used.

 

[Miramonti]

It's because you had people over on r/datahoarder with over 1PB on their unlimited accounts.

If Amazon used copyright mechanisms like Dropbox and others, they may have been able to pull this out for a bit longer.

Also I bet many of the heavy hitters encrypted their data, so Amazon couldn't save space with those used by others. I encrypted, but only had ~500gb and am still well within the $60/year per TB.

 

[tynopik]

i assume someone has created a generic file to jpg encoder?

 

[mnewsham]

i assume someone has created a generic file to jpg encoder?

From what I've heard Amazon has some tool which can detect this.

Further they could also just limit single image files to 50-100mb in size. Anything larger than that is some crazy resolution image, or other data is embedded in it.

 

[tynopik]

Further they could also just limit single image files to 50-100mb in size.

well that's no problem, you just split it into a gazillion parts

 

[Red Squirrel]

I have about 19TB of "cloud" storage and direct gig connection to it and a 0.3ms ping. Costs me nothing per month because it's paid for and sitting in my basement. Funny thing is 19TB is kinda small by today's standards for home setups. I just don't need more than that right now, and just add more storage as needed.

Seriously, not sure why people pay a company a reoccurring fee to store files when you can do it for free. Ok so you have to buy the equipment, build the servers etc but that's a 1 time cost.

When I heard about Amazon's unlimited plan it was kinda intriguing as an extra backup solution, but transferring the data to my work desk drawer via sneakernet is still cheaper.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I have about 19TB of "cloud" storage and direct gig connection to it and a 0.3ms ping. Costs me nothing per month because it's paid for and sitting in my basement. Funny thing is 19TB is kinda small by today's standards for home setups. I just don't need more than that right now, and just add more storage as needed.

Seriously, not sure why people pay a company a reoccurring fee to store files when you can do it for free. Ok so you have to buy the equipment, build the servers etc but that's a 1 time cost.

When I heard about Amazon's unlimited plan it was kinda intriguing as an extra backup solution, but transferring the data to my work desk drawer via sneakernet is still cheaper.

Amazon is great because when your house burns down, your data is safe.
Building home storage is not really a "one time cost", it may be a "one time every 5 years" cost, but, replacing all that infrastructire can be time consuming and costly.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Amazon is great because when your house burns down, your data is safe.
Building home storage is not really a "one time cost", it may be a "one time every 5 years" cost, but, replacing all that infrastructire can be time consuming and costly.

I'd say it's more of a "when the hell is the price per GB of storage going to drop below what it was in 2013?" kind of cost.

*grumble*

 

[ultimatebob]

Amazon is great because when your house burns down, your data is safe.
Building home storage is not really a "one time cost", it may be a "one time every 5 years" cost, but, replacing all that infrastructire can be time consuming and costly.

Cloud storage is great until your hard drive fails and you try to restore a 500 GB of data over your 20 Mbps cable connection... and you wait several days to get all of your files back. Bonus points on the aggravation index if you have an ISP that throttles your data or charges extra if you hit a monthly bandwidth cap.

 

[mikeymikec]

I have about 19TB of "cloud" storage and direct gig connection to it and a 0.3ms ping. Costs me nothing per month because it's paid for and sitting in my basement. Funny thing is 19TB is kinda small by today's standards for home setups. I just don't need more than that right now, and just add more storage as needed.

Seriously, not sure why people pay a company a reoccurring fee to store files when you can do it for free. Ok so you have to buy the equipment, build the servers etc but that's a 1 time cost.

19TB of storage is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it a one-time cost (e.g. maintenance and electricity). Furthermore, if one has 19TB of data, it's not inconceivable that one will double that figure or more in the foreseeable future.

 

[mnewsham]

Cloud storage is great until your hard drive fails and you try to restore a 500 GB of data over your 20 Mbps cable connection... and you wait several days to get all of your files back. Bonus points on the aggravation index if you have an ISP that throttles your data or charges extra if you hit a monthly bandwidth cap.

That's why you just live in or near a major city.

1gbps upload and download

 

[ultimatebob]

19TB of storage is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it a one-time cost (e.g. maintenance and electricity). Furthermore, if one has 19TB of data, it's not inconceivable that one will double that figure or more in the foreseeable future.

You can get a 24 TB storage array for about $1,300 now. Compared to what Google/Amazon/Apple would charge you per month to host that much data, it seems like a pretty damn good deal. The drive pays for itself in roughly 7 months if you actually had that much data to store.

 

[Exterous]

It's because you had people over on r/datahoarder with over 1PB on their unlimited accounts.

The slickdeals thread about this was full of people bitching because now they had to find a new way to store their 50TB+ for cheap. Of course I don't know who in their right minds would think that this would continue. At best I figured people might get a year of being grandfathered in but there is no way this was going to be a long term deal

 

[MrSquished]

I have about 19TB of "cloud" storage and direct gig connection to it and a 0.3ms ping. Costs me nothing per month because it's paid for and sitting in my basement. Funny thing is 19TB is kinda small by today's standards for home setups. I just don't need more than that right now, and just add more storage as needed.

Seriously, not sure why people pay a company a reoccurring fee to store files when you can do it for free. Ok so you have to buy the equipment, build the servers etc but that's a 1 time cost.

When I heard about Amazon's unlimited plan it was kinda intriguing as an extra backup solution, but transferring the data to my work desk drawer via sneakernet is still cheaper.

It's always advisable to have a backup off-site in case of a disaster. So backing up all your stuff on your home network is still risky.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Hmmm. I don't use Amazon Drive nor Google Drive. I started with Dropbox due to others at a new job recommending it in 2012 and have used it since; I love it.

I just wish Dropbox had other purchase options. I still use the free storage (about 5 GB), but I'm not willing to pay $99/year for 1 TB. Yeah, I'm cheap.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

If Amazon used copyright mechanisms like Dropbox and others, they may have been able to pull this out for a bit longer.

Also I bet many of the heavy hitters encrypted their data, so Amazon couldn't save space with those used by others. I encrypted, but only had ~500gb and am still well within the $60/year per TB.

I didn't know they had implemented such technologies, but I am not really surprised. But I do not use cloud solutions. I am a bit concerned though that in order for such technologies to be used your stored data is being screened and I am not keen on such things.