This is the second installment of my "Online Storage for Recording Projects" post. Today we'll be looking at:
Amazon Cloud Drive
Space: You get 5GB free with your Amazon Account. Upgrades are available from 20GB up to 1TB, priced about $1 per GB. With accounts 20GB or larger you get unlimited hosting for MP3 & ACC files.
Reliability: I don't think Amazon is going anywhere anytime soon. If they were to phase out their CloudDrive I would imagine there would be enough notice to move the data.
Budget: Pricing packages are done in 20GB, 50GB, 100GB, 200GB, 500GB & 1TB costing about $1 per GB. 20GB = $20 / year while the 1TB is $1000 / year.
File Sharing: There doesn't seem to be any support for sharing files with other users with Cloud Drive.
Security: While Amazon boasts that you can "securely" store your files on their Cloud. They don't really tell you what that means exactly, nor do I see any privacy policy specifically for content on the Cloud Drive. I'm not the only one who is feeling dubious about Amazon's Cloud Drive Security. Here's two articles I found on the topic. HERE & HERE
Platform Compatibility: Can be accessed through a compatible web browser. PC, Mac, iPad & any Android mobile device can be used for streaming content off of the Cloud Player.
Interface: There are two interfaces to be familiar with when using the Cloud Drive. The first one is the Cloud Drive page and the second is the Cloud Player page. While it is pretty easy to upload multiple files at once with the Cloud Drive page you can only download one file at a time unless you want to download music files via the Cloud Player. Both interfaces are simple and fairly intuitive.
Conclusion: While I do use Cloud Drive to store my Amazon music purchases, I don't really think this is a good solution for archiving our recording session files. The platform compatibility is good and I feel like the web interfaces are easy enough to navigate even for a newbie. However, while $20 a year isn't a bad price for 20GB, I'm sure we'll need more space. The next upgrade package is 50GB for $50 which is more than I want to pay for storage at this time. Also there is currently no way of sharing content between members unless we all want to use my Amazon account, which really isn't an option. Lastly, while the content I plan on storing isn't personally sensitive, it is a work in progress and original material. I'd like to know its secure. Currently I don't feel confident that Amazon's Cloud drive offers that.
Next solution investigated... SOS Online Backup.
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