After Amazon raised the prices for its Prime service in the summer, the next unpleasant news came straight away. At the end of January, the Amazon Drive cloud storage will be discontinued.
Amazon is no longer just an online mail order company. In addition to a large range, the company now also offers a streaming and music service, e-books and magazines and much more. So far, the cloud Amazon Drive has also been part of the portfolio, for many an insider tip when it comes to data backup online. That should change in the future.
Amazon Drive is being discontinued
According to official announcement Amazon will stamp out the Drive service in the foreseeable future. This applies to both the limited, free version and the unlimited version integrated in Prime. From January 31, 2023 it will no longer be possible to upload data to the cloud. However, the files already stored there can still be accessed until December 31, 2023. From then on, Amazon Drive users will have to look for an alternative. App users should also note that access will no longer be possible from October 31, 2023.
As to why, Amazon said: “We are taking the opportunity to focus our efforts more on Amazon Photos to offer customers a dedicated solution for storing photos and videos.” The related cloud service Amazon Photos is accordingly not part of the measure affected.
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What happens to the stored data?
Even after the setting, the stored data is not completely lost. Anyone who has not already looked for an alternative and deleted their Amazon Drive account will at least find the stored photos and videos automatically on Amazon Photos. However, all other data will be deleted by Amazon after an explicit notification.
Incidentally, the Amazon Photos service is also available in a paid and a free version. However, the latter is limited to 5 GB of storage space. Prime members, on the other hand, have unlimited photo storage and only the video storage space is also capped at 5 GB. From EUR 19.99 per year, you can expand the storage space at Amazon Photos step by step, both with and without a Prime subscription. The most comprehensive package contains space for around 30 TB for photos and around 4200 hours of video material in 1080p HD, but it also costs 2999.70 euros a year.
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Alternatives to Amazon Drive
Although there are still a few months until the final discontinuation, users should try to find an alternative to Amazon Drive as soon as possible. If you only save photos and videos in the cloud, you can of course simply switch to Amazon Photos, as mentioned. But those who like to store other file types should slowly start looking around at the competition.
Apple’s iCloud Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive, for example, also offer 5 GB of free storage, Google Drive even offers 15 GB, while Dropbox offers 2 GB. With all the providers mentioned, you can also book different amounts of storage in the subscription.