Does anyone use Amazon Photos for storage ?

Thanks for the replies, I only came across it about 2 hours ago when Mrs Badger paused something she was watching on TV and it came up as an ad. I'll have to give it a whirl !
 
As well as any processed shots, I use it as backup for my RAW files.
I curate RAWs kept locally to save on space but as Amazon photos is unlimited I dump every RAW file I take on there. The Ai search function works pretty well on the few occasions I have used it.
 
I have been using Amazon Photo as an off site backup for my NAS, like insurance it is one of those things you need but don't want to have to use, recovering everything would be so slow and a massive pain but eventually doable.
As I pay for Prime the photo part is effectively free, the small amount of family video we have takes me over the limit and needs an additional pound or so a month payment.
 
I used Prime Photos several years back when I was into wildlife but when they doubled the cost of Prime I cancelled.
However I recently renewed my subscription and was surprised to find all of my old photos were still there several years later.
 
Anything Amazon is anathema to me, so the answer's no. Like most corporations, its ideal is to morph you into an uncomplaining cyborg. Consume, consume, without any regard for the ecosphere. Doom will be the result for all - the innocent along with the for-profit perpetrators. Step back from it & take some responsibility.

The vision is hard, but I'm not joking.
 
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Im not so sure about the Nature of @droj 's post but along similar lines I am not sure why would trust your achieve to any 3rd party site. You not only loose control of it but you become reliant on how they want to run their business. I.e at the mercy of their price rises, stuck paying subscription fees ad infinitum and at risk if they decided to limit, change or end the service - a bit like when Flickr went from totally free to their paid model 15 years or so ago etc.

In my opinion, and feel free to disagree, its a short term way of looking at things.

I won't derail the thread with my backup solution but happy to discuss if thats the way the thread goes.
 
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A_S said:
Im not so sure about the Nature of @droj 's post but along similar lines I am not sure why would trust your achieve to any 3rd party site. You not only loose control of it but you become reliant on how they want to run their business. I.e at the mercy of their price rises, stuck paying subscription fees ad infinitum and at risk if they decided to limit, change or end the service - a bit like when Flickr went from totally free to their paid model 15 years or so ago etc.

In my opinion, and feel free to disagree, its a short term way of looking at things.

I won't derail the thread with my backup solution but happy to discuss if thats the way the thread goes.
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When I buy a camera or lens or car or even a house, the strategy isn’t based on it being a forever decision.

Why would something as trivial as a second string backup of my images need to be a concrete decision I am ‘trapped’ by? Why can’t I change provider if their business model changes or I no longer feel it’s VFM.

I’m personally not a great fan of cloud based or indeed subscription based services. However I get frustrated at some of the arguments used against them.

What if Amazon change their business model? Or put up the price?

I can choose to leave, it’s not the world’s greatest puzzle.
 
benc98 said:
I’ve only recently become aware of the term ens***ification, now, id be wary of using Amazon
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I think you might have seen the same Norwegian video as me!
 
Nod said:
I think you might have seen the same Norwegian video as me!
Click to expand...
And for those of us who didn’t see the video?

There’s no way to guess the missing letters
 
hit
 
Phil V said:
When I buy a camera or lens or car or even a house, the strategy isn’t based on it being a forever decision.

Why would something as trivial as a second string backup of my images need to be a concrete decision I am ‘trapped’ by? Why can’t I change provider if their business model changes or I no longer feel it’s VFM.

I’m personally not a great fan of cloud based or indeed subscription based services. However I get frustrated at some of the arguments used against them.

What if Amazon change their business model? Or put up the price?

I can choose to leave, it’s not the world’s greatest puzzle.
Click to expand...

I guess it depends on a number of factors. If you are storing years worth of files, raw files, for events then it becomes prohibative to move or change - a bit like being tied into a camera system, so if something does change - Like they pull the service or limit it, and the cynic in me says nothing that good lasts forever - you risk a high price in both time and cost to sort it out.

For example if you are storing 10TB of files on the cloud and have to move provider, sourcing another provider and then re-uploading those images is going to take a long time, especially if you don't have local copies as well (relying on the cloud base as safe to have one copy) or the space to transfer those back to your system.


That would be my worry anyway. I'd rather be in control of my backup solution personally which is why I use a second offsite NAS.
 
I don't use Amazon Photos, but I know with many of the cloud storage options it's not uploading that's an issue but downloading.

Questions to ask, is there an extra cost to download, and with regards to Amazon is there a way to bulk download. Selecting each individual image in a 10tb catalogue is going to be an f-ing pain. A backup solution is pretty useless if you can't retrieve your images.
 
A_S said:
I guess it depends on a number of factors. If you are storing years worth of files, raw files, for events then it becomes prohibative to move or change - a bit like being tied into a camera system, so if something does change - Like they pull the service or limit it, and the cynic in me says nothing that good lasts forever - you risk a high price in both time and cost to sort it out.

For example if you are storing 10TB of files on the cloud and have to move provider, sourcing another provider and then re-uploading those images is going to take a long time, especially if you don't have local copies as well (relying on the cloud base as safe to have one copy) or the space to transfer those back to your system.


That would be my worry anyway. I'd rather be in control of my backup solution personally which is why I use a second offsite NAS.
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Well here’s my take.
When I was ‘working’, my offsite storage was my 2nd tier copy. If I’d been looking for a 1st tier backup, I’d have expected to pay more and for it to come with better guarantees than Amazon offer on something that’s effectively a ‘free’ product.

So if I’d have decided Amazon wasn’t for me, you’re right uploading terabytes of data to an alternative provider would have been painful, but that’s true whether it’s Amazon I’ve fallen out with, or any other provider.

So now we’re discussing whether a cloud based backup solution is ‘worth it’! For me? I’d say a serious photographer (whether pro or not) should be planning to have a working copy, a local backup and an offsite copy of everything. You could choose to remove the local backup but that’s personal choice.

So now, the question is whether the ‘offsite’ means I physically have to manage that, or do I use a cloud based service. The choice is:
  • Swap about physical disks I have to keep with friends, family, or maybe at work?
  • Use an enterprise level cloud based solution, at cost, but more robust than Amazon Prime, but still with many of the negatives offered by Amazon (price rises, change of terms)
  • Use a ‘free’ but slow service from Amazon.
For me it’s a no brainer, but YMMV.
 
Delphin said:
I don't use Amazon Photos, but I know with many of the cloud storage options it's not uploading that's an issue but downloading.

Questions to ask, is there an extra cost to download, and with regards to Amazon is there a way to bulk download. Selecting each individual image in a 10tb catalogue is going to be an f-ing pain. A backup solution is pretty useless if you can't retrieve your images.
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Any proper cloud based ‘storage’ will allow bulk downloading.

I think photographers often get confused about this because they pretended services like photobucket, Flickr annd even Google photos are ‘backup solutions’ when they’re not and were never meant to be. They’re photo sharing platforms.

I suppose the water gets muddied when ‘storage solutions’ start to offer guest logins that means they begin to look like they’re ‘sharing’ apps too.
 
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Phil V said:
Any proper cloud based ‘storage’ will allow bulk downloading.

I think photographers often get confused about this because they pretended services like photobucket, Flickr annd even Google photos are ‘backup solutions’ when they’re not and were never meant to be. They’re photo sharing platforms.

I suppose the water gets muddied when ‘storage solutions’ start to offer guest logins that means they begin to look like they’re ‘sharing’ apps too.
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Also, if you did happen to find a site that didn't allow bulk downloading (as Phil says though, this is very unlikely), you can almost guarantee that someone will come up with a tool to do it for you.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but how do people set up an offsite NAS? I feel like the only way I could do that would be to ask my friend if I could stick some hardware in his loft...
 
skullfunkerry said:
Also, if you did happen to find a site that didn't allow bulk downloading (as Phil says though, this is very unlikely), you can almost guarantee that someone will come up with a tool to do it for you.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but how do people set up an offsite NAS? I feel like the only way I could do that would be to ask my friend if I could stick some hardware in his loft...
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I’m not sure I’ve got a good enough ‘friend’ that I could use their electricity 24/7 :confused:
 
Nod said:
I think you might have seen the same Norwegian video as me!
Click to expand...
I hadn't seen it, just watched it - it's the perfect explainer
Phil V said:
And for those of us who didn’t see the video?

There’s no way to guess the missing letters
Click to expand...

The video summed up ens***ification nicely. The term was coined up Cory Doctorow, and used to describe how online platforms are at first designed with the user in mind, then it rewards advertisers / partners and then it makes the service bad for both..

https://www.channel4.com/news/ens**...the-internet-worse-for-everyone-cory-doctorow
 
benc98 said:
I hadn't seen it, just watched it - it's the perfect explainer


The video summed up ens***ification nicely. The term was coined up Cory Doctorow, and used to describe how online platforms are at first designed with the user in mind, then it rewards advertisers / partners and then it makes the service bad for both..

Click to expand...
That’s not just the Internet, that’s the inevitable outcome of unregulated capitalism.
 
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It's not if cloud storage will allow download, but how much will it cost if you want to leave, it can cost 4 times as much to leave as it does to store



Cloud Storage Cost Calculator: Compare AWS, Google Cloud & Azure [2026] - OneSDR - Technology

☁️ With cloud storage becoming essential for businesses, developers, and creators, it’s critical to understand how much you’re really paying. Whether you’re backing up photos or hosting terabytes of data, ... Read more
www.onesdr.com www.onesdr.com

Screenshot 2026-03-05 at 10.36.30.png
 
Delphin said:
It's not if cloud storage will allow download, but how much will it cost if you want to leave, it can cost 4 times as much to leave as it does to store



Cloud Storage Cost Calculator: Compare AWS, Google Cloud & Azure [2026] - OneSDR - Technology

☁️ With cloud storage becoming essential for businesses, developers, and creators, it’s critical to understand how much you’re really paying. Whether you’re backing up photos or hosting terabytes of data, ... Read more
www.onesdr.com www.onesdr.com

View attachment 476228
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You’re looking at the enterprise level AWS.
This discussion is around the ‘free’ photo storage included with a standard Amazon prime account.
Likewise your table shows Google Cloud, but again most photographers would be only using the free Google Photos app, which is more limited than Amazon photos, and Azure, where most photographers would be using OneDrive.
 
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Phil V said:
I’m not sure I’ve got a good enough ‘friend’ that I could use their electricity 24/7 :confused:
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Same here Phil! So how do people do it, is it just another company offering storage? Surely that’s just cloud storage with a different name?
 
RE offsite nas. I started with no knowledge except a fairly decent working knowledge of how computers work (system building etc) but no knowledge of networking protocals. I just used youtube

1.) Home NAS by synology
2.) Second Synology NAS in a cupboard at my parents house
3.) Set up Tailscale (VPN) and link both NASs to Tailscale account - could also be done with Open VPN and a standard VPN
4.)Set up Hyperbackup software on synology
5.) confirgure backup schedule
6.) done.
 
skullfunkerry said:
Same here Phil! So how do people do it, is it just another company offering storage? Surely that’s just cloud storage with a different name?
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The standard ‘offsite backup’ is old school generally. You make a physical backup of your data and store it off site.

So typically you’d use 2 drives. You run your backup, take it to your mates house, and swap the disk for last weeks, then next week do the same. So you have an offsite copy that’s up to a week out of date.

But I’ll reiterate, unless you’re working at enterprise levels, then your offsite solution should be the backup to your backup.
 
A_S said:
RE offsite nas. I started with no knowledge except a fairly decent working knowledge of how computers work (system building etc) but no knowledge of networking protocals. I just used youtube

1.) Home NAS by synology
2.) Second Synology NAS in a cupboard at my parents house
3.) Set up Tailscale (VPN) and link both NASs to Tailscale account - could also be done with Open VPN and a standard VPN
4.)Set up Hyperbackup software on synology
5.) confirgure backup schedule
6.) done.
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It might be in bad taste to point out the built in obsolescence of using a parents home for this.

Amazon are still here, but my parents are long gone.
 
Phil V said:
The standard ‘offsite backup’ is old school generally. You make a physical backup of your data and store it off site.

So typically you’d use 2 drives. You run your backup, take it to your mates house, and swap the disk for last weeks, then next week do the same. So you have an offsite copy that’s up to a week out of date.

But I’ll reiterate, unless you’re working at enterprise levels, then your offsite solution should be the backup to your backup.
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It didn't even occur to me about just having some storage, I got hung up on it being online so you could back up remotely. This makes more sense, thanks!
 
skullfunkerry said:
...how do people set up an offsite NAS? I feel like the only way I could do that would be to ask my friend if I could stick some hardware in his loft...
Click to expand...

yep - that's what I used to do - i had a mate that was also a IT freelancer, and we literally just backed our systems up to an "extra disk pack" on each others servers overnight using a VPN over t'internet.
 
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