Amazon Drive for PC or MAC Archives

The roster sort of sounds like Santa’s reindeer roll-call: On Dropbox, on SkyDrive, on iCloud, on Google! And now, Amazon becomes the latest company/sleigh-puller to dive into the Desktop Cloud Storage Wars of 2012.

Amazon Cloud Drive initially launched more than a year ago. Starting Wednesday, Amazon began offering the Amazon Cloud Drive desktop app for Macs running Snow Leopard or Lion. (There’s also a Windows client for Vista and Windows 7, if you roll that way.)

You get 5GB of storage free with Amazon Cloud Drive. You can pay for more storage, with easy pricing: At each level, the price is a dollar per gigabyte; the 20GB plan costs $20 per year, with plans also available at 50GB, 100GB, 200GB, 500GB, and 1000GB storage levels. You can store unlimited Amazon-purchased MP3s on any plan; with the paid tiers, you can also store an unlimited amount of digital music acquired elsewhere. The service’s pricing isn’t quite as affordable as Microsoft’s for SkyDrive, which charges $10 per year for 27GB, $25 per year for 57GB, or $50 per year for 107GB. That said, Amazon charges about half of what Dropbox does for similar storage tiers.

Installing Amazon Cloud Drive is simple enough: You simply drag the app to your Applications folder and then launch it. When you first run the app, you get prompted to log in to your Amazon account. The app lives in your menu bar with a hollow cloud icon.

In a decided difference from its competitors, Cloud Drive doesn’t create a specific folder whose contents sync automatically to your Amazon-hosted storage. Rather, you drag the files (or folders) that you’d like to upload onto the cloud icon in your menubar; it sports a green checkbox (and displays an on-screen alert) when your upload is complete. Your documents won’t automatically stay in sync—you need to upload them again if you make changes that you want stored in Cloud Drive.

You can also Control-click (right-click) on documents or folders on your desktop and choose Upload to Cloud Drive. Note that this contextual menu option won’t appear until you restart your Mac after installing Amazon Cloud Drive.

To download files from your Amazon Cloud Drive, oddly enough, you need to visit the Cloud Drive website.

It’s hard to say whether Amazon’s move to further entrench itself on the desktop as a cloud storage solution is out of character. After all, what exactly is beyond the purview of a company that already serves as a massive Internet retailer, movie streamer, Kindle maker, Web service provider, and IMDb runner?

At any rate, despite some interface limitations, Amazon Cloud Drive certainly works for quickly storing your documents online. If you prefer full two-way sync, however, you may prefer one of its (ever more numerous) competitors.

Lex uses a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 5, an iPad mini, a Kindle 3, a TiVo HD, and a treadmill desk, and loves them all. His latest book, a children's book parody for adults, is called "The Kid in the Crib." Lex lives in New Jersey with his wife and three young kids.

How do I store my photos on Amazon Prime?

You can store your photos on Amazon Prime Photos or Amazon Cloud Drive. Both platforms are included within your Prime subscription and offer incredible value for photographers looking to back-up a significant archive.

How much Amazon Prime photo storage do I get?

With Amazon Prime Photos you get unlimited photo storage across both the Prime Photos and Cloud Drive platforms, and in our review of this service and others, for the price of Prime that’s a very good deal.

In the age of 4K video and 50-megapixel images, having a proper photo storage platform for your image archive is more important than ever. Photographers have flirted with numerous cloud storage options over the years, but buyouts and changes in the marketplace have made it difficult to know where to store your photos. Once you build your archive up somewhere and craft a taxonomy, you don’t want to move it.

Originally a bookseller, Amazon is now invading nearly every facet of our lives these days, from its smart speakers to original television content. But one of Amazon’s many services that doesn’t often get the hype it should is its photo storage capability.

Amazon Prime offers many benefits, but for photographers its unlimited photo storage – which comes free with a Prime membership – is unrivalled in the marketplace. Even Flickr caps its users’ storage at a terabyte.

What is the difference between Amazon Prime Photos and Amazon Cloud Drive?

There are two ways of using Amazon Prime for photo storage: Prime Photos and Amazon Drive. To understand the difference, try thinking about it terms of a website. Amazon Drive is like the content management system, or CMS – the back end where you upload and manage files. Prime Photos is the front end, the public-facing site where you see the fruits of your labour in all their glory.

Also, Prime Photos will display your images. But Amazon Drive can also store your music files, Word documents, PDFs and anything else. Drive is more of an asset management platform. Prime Photos is more of a gallery.

Both Prime Photos and Amazon Cloud Drive offer the same unlimited photo storage. However, for all other files – including videos – you’re limited to 5GB. Once you exceed that number you’ll need to purchase more storage for those files.

In our ongoing Amazon Prime Photos review, the limitations can be annoying if you rarely shoot video and are slightly over the limit. However, the expansion price isn’t steep and if you plan to shoot more video over time, it’s well worth it.

Family Vault

What is the Prime Photo’s Family Vault?

Essentially it’s an easy way to share your images with others in your family. It works by enabling you to connect together all the Amazon Prime Photo accounts in the household together, so there is one repository for all the images that everyone can access. Just like a family photo album, but many times larger and thankfully searchable so you can find the images that you want easily. 

All you need to do to get started is to send an invite to the other members of your family and once they’ve accepted the invite they’re able to access the Family Vault. 

The way that it can then be used is that once you have selected and uploaded images to your Prime Photo’s you can then choose a selection to add to the Family Vault. 

This means that you retain your private photo library alongside the one the rest of the family can access. 

Is Prime Photos free for Prime members?

Yes, Prime Photos is ‘free’ if you subscribe to Amazon Prime. But of course you’re paying £7.99 / $12.99, so free really means ‘within the terms of your subscription’.

Uploading images to Prime Photos and Amazon Drive

Amazon makes backing up your images very easy for photographers. You can upload to Prime Photos and Drive via desktop clients for both Mac and Windows machines.

There are also upload clients for iOS and Android devices, as well as Amazon’s own Fire devices.

Uploading to Prime Photos and Amazon Drive can be done via drag-and-drop.

It’s worth noting that Amazon’s photo upload clients don’t offer syncing or automated backups. However, there are now apps such as Syncovery that offer Amazon Cloud Drive as an option for automated file synchronisation.

Prime Photos Metadata

Amazon Prime Photos populates your images with some metadata, but not much. From your images’ EXIF data it will display the camera name, the shutter speed and aperture, date and time the photo was take, the file name, file size and resolution.

Other platforms might provide a deeper list of EXIF data, such as ISO and White Balance values, but for basic photo storage and archive management, what Prime Photos provides is pretty sufficient.

Amazon Prime members get unlimited photo storage, 5 GB of storage for videos, document, and other files for themselves. They can also invite up to five friends or family members to receive unlimited photo storage, and collect photos together in the Family Vault.

To display an image’s metadata, click the little i icon in the top right.

Sharing images from Prime Photos

You can share your images from Prime Photos, but the scope is somewhat limited. However, for photographers simply looking to back up their archive, you’ll find all the sharing capabilities you’ll need.

You share Prime Photos via Facebook, email or direct link to the image. You can also share photos to Family Vaults or create groups of other Prime users and invite them to see your images.

What happens to my photos when I cancel Amazon Prime?

This is the big caveat to the boon of having unlimited photo storage. Once you cancel your Amazon Prime subscription or allow it to expire, you revert back to the free plan which only gives you 5GB of space. Amazon says:

If you exceed your Service Plan’s storage limit, including by downgrading or not renewing your Service Plan or no longer qualifying for an Additional Benefit, we may delete or restrict access to Your Files. We may impose other restrictions on use of the Service.

This implies that Amazon may delete your files or restrict your access to them. Most likely, Amazon will offer you the chance to return to Prime and regain access, rather than simply delete them the second you miss a Prime payment.

But if you someday realise Prime isn’t for you and wish to relocate your archive, it’s worth downloading your photos and other files before simply canceling your membership.

Amazon Prime Photos review for professional

Can Amazon Prime Photos and Amazon Cloud Drive be used by professional photographers? Yes and no. As a photo storage platform and archival management tool, it’s simple-to-use and fantastic value with its unlimited image storage.

But if you’re looking to rely on Amazon Prime for more than photo storage you might need to think twice. Professional photographers might look for an asset management platform that allows them to share images with clients, or even sell photos directly as 500px has just enabled.

Amazon Prime doesn’t allow this. Buried in the terms, Amazon makes clear that your files are intended for personal use and should not be used for commercial purposes.

Now, will Amazon actually know if you are sending a link to a Prime Photos gallery to a client vs your mother? Probably not. But the point is, there’s no easy way for your client to purchase directly from Amazon Cloud Drive or Prime Photos.

Clients would need to give you file names and send a PayPal payment, which is all a bit cumbersome and not very professional. So if your intent is to sell images directly from your archive, Prime Photos and Amazon Cloud Drive might not be the best solution for you.

If you shoot for your own enjoyment, however, or if you’re looking to archive a large collection of images simply as a back-up or even to share amongst family, Amazon Prime photo storage is one of the most user-friendly and economical options out there.

Amazon Prime Photos Storage for videographers

This is where self-awareness comes into it. If you shoot solely stills, Prime Photos Storage is brilliant and well worth the money. If you occasionally shoot stills, Amazon Prime Photos Storage is still worth the money, even if you have to pay for extra video storage every so often.

If you shoot mainly video, though, Prime Photos Storage isn’t for you. The clue is in the title! In our experience, the best value platform for videographers is Vimeo Pro.

Amazon Drive is a reminder that if there's an app or service out there that's needed, Amazon will try and fill that need – from shopping to smart speakers, from video streaming to ebooks, it has everything covered... and that includes cloud storage.

The focus is primarily on photos and videos, though you can add any kind of file at a push (if you can work out how). While there are better cloud storage services out there, Amazon Drive might suit you if you want to make the most out of your Prime subscription.

Amazon Drive features

Amazon Drive has gone through several different incarnations down the years, and what's left at the moment is a bit of a confusing mess. It looks as though Amazon wants to keep the Amazon Photos service up and running, for your photos and videos, and has just kept around some of the Amazon Drive functionality as an afterthought.

Amazon Photos is actually quite a slick service, doing a good job of backing up your pictures and videos from your smartphone, tablet or computer, and getting them organized online. If you're a Prime subscriber, you get an unlimited amount of storage space, and a few extras like face recognition (so the service will automatically group together photos of your sister, your brother, and your distant cousin).

There's not really any two-way syncing, or file versioning, or complete backups for your devices. Actually, you don't get many of the features offered by competing services – features like selective syncing, or scheduled backups, or an online office suite you can use in your browser. Again, the focus seems to be on Amazon Photos.

Amazon Drive actually has a link to Amazon Photos right in the main navigation bar, and if you make the jump over you get a few extras: smarter search, photo editing, and more. If you're going to make use of Amazon Drive, it's likely to be because of Amazon Photos (and we wouldn't be surprised if Amazon Drive gets phased out, eventually).

Amazon Drive interface

As we've said, there are a few confusing aspects to Amazon Drive, not least that the software you download to your computer is called Amazon Photos – that suggests that it just deals with your photo library, but in fact the tool will secure any folder or file irrespective of type. It also now includes the ability to sync, Dropbox-style, providing a means to automatically secure new files without any extra user effort.

We like the way that you can pick any file or folder from your computer and choose to upload them, and the way you can carry out one-off backups as well as keeping specific folders monitored, and overall the desktop applications and web interface are polished enough. File transfers were speedy (considering our home internet connection), and you can just drag and drop files on to the apps to upload them, if you want.

While the interface scores highly for ease of use, it's a bit bare bones in terms of functionality. You can only stream video files that are under 20 minutes in length directly from the web, for example, which immediately puts it behind most of its competitors. Also you can't really view your files in the desktop app: it's more of an uploading tool.

A lot of users may well be able to get by on the web interface alone – you can run one-off uploads from here, but there's no automatic folder uploading. Searching through your files, as well as carrying out simple operations like moving and renaming, is all straightforward. There's also the option to share files and folders, but like a lot of the Amazon Drive features, it's all a bit rudimentary.

Amazon Drive security

Amazon Drive offers two-factor authentication (if you choose to activate it on your Amazon account), but security isn't a strong point here. There's no end-to-end encryption, no at-rest encryption, and a very open method of managing shared links (it isn’t possible to password protect the link or limit it to access from a particular account).

Fine for a few holiday snaps then, but you're not really going to want to put important work documents or sensitive files on here, just in case. You'll find plenty of cloud storage options out there with much better security measures, whether it's end-to-end encryption or password-protected links.

Amazon Drive pricing

Amazon Drive pricing is a little tricky to get your head around – with a Prime subscription (from $12.99 or £7.99 a month), you get an unlimited amount of photo storage space for free (or rather as part of the cost of Prime), as well as 5GB of room for your videos and other file types. If you're not a Prime subscriber, then that 5GB is the initial limit for everyone, for any file type, free of charge.

Extending that 5GB, whether you're a Prime member or not, will cost you: $19.99 (about £16) a year for 100GB of room, $59.99 (about £48) a year for 1TB of room, or $119.98 (about £95) a year for 2TB of room, which compares pretty favorably with the other cloud storage services out there. Remember that if you're a Prime member, you only need the extra storage for files that aren't images.

Amazon Drive verdict

Amazon Drive is quite an odd service in many ways: it almost feels half-abandoned by Amazon, yet it will do a respectable job of backing up files and folders from your local computer, and can even do this automatically for certain folders. It can't match the advanced features of other services, but it does an okay job.

The Amazon Photos component of Amazon Drive is much more impressive – especially if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, which gives you an unlimited amount of room in the cloud for all your pictures. Even Amazon Photos can't match up to the services from Google and Apple though, so we'd suggest this is only for people already heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem.