Amazon UK have launched a new Unlimited Storage plan, allowing customers to easily upload and securely store infinite amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and other files to the web.
Costing £55 per year, Amazon Drive offers a free three-month trial. Mind you in the States Amazon Drive only costs $59.99 so an interesting exchange rate and again I feel ripped off for being British instead of American. Still it is cheaper than say DropBox who charge £89 per year for a miserly 1TB storage.
You have to wonder just how many online storage places you might need. Microsoft (who suddenly change their pricing plans a year or so back), Google, DropBox and (if you own an iThingy) Apple all offer online storage.
Just because you’ve got some online storage doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe however. Nothing is forever, CD and DVD storage will degrade (floppy disks and tape drives certainly did) and online storage is the same – stop paying and everything you own will vanish into the ether. By the time this happens, if you have uploaded all the media you own it could take days over current (still relatively slow) broadband to download it all back to your computer, if you have a big enough hard drive to do so in the first place.
Still, it’s easy to see the attraction of online storage and certainly if your laptop hard drive gets fried you’ll be glad you have everything backed up.
Prime members, who already get unlimited photo storage will still have to pay for an unlimited Storage plan if they want to save their videos and files in addition to photos. Existing Amazon Drive customers can switch their plans by signing into their Amazon Drive accounts and selecting the free Unlimited Storage trial.
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You get a few apps now that will transfer data from one storage service to another. Makes moving easier and means you don’t have to rely on your internet connection.