Storing photos, videos, music files, and documents is challenging and an essential task these days. We opt for various ways to keep our files safe and save ourselves from the hassle of locating each file or losing track of the file.
To solve this issue, Amazon came up with the Amazon Drive in 2011. This article will give a detailed description of Amazon Drive and how it can resolve your storage issues.
Amazon Drive is a storage service where you can upload music, photos, videos, and documents and access these from web-connected devices. You can also stream music on a tablet PC, computer, or smartphone using Amazon Drive.
The introduction of Amazon Drive solves your storage troubles and gives you additional space for uploading your data and keeping it available at hand whenever needed. Amazon Drive may prove to be very beneficial for those who already own an Amazon Prime account.
There is a range of storage services that Amazon Drive offers. The first 5GB of storage is offered for free. You then have to pay a certain fixed amount for different paid storage plans. 20GB, 50GB, 100GB, 200GB, 500GB, and 1TB are the various paid storage options available for Amazon Drive. If you download songs from the Amazon MP3 Store, they automatically get uploaded on Amazon Drive, but the space occupied by them isn’t counted in the drive space.
Storage plans offered by Amazon Drive
As mentioned earlier, Amazon Drive provides you with the first 5GB of data storage for free. You can upload the desired files on the drive without worrying about extra costs. But what if your requirements exceed the 5GB storage requirement? Don’t worry! Amazon has got paid storage plans to offer. The details of all these plans are mentioned below.
100 GB of additional storage
You can store 50,000 photos at 2MB file size at this available storage, or you may store 14-hour-long 1080p video in this available storage. Amazon Drive charges $1.99/month or $19.99 a year to offer you this additional space of 100 GB.
1 TB of additional storage
You can store 500,000 photos at a 2MB file size in this available storage space.
Or you may store 140 hours long 1080p video in this available storage. Amazon Drive charges $6.99/month or $59.99/year to offer you this additional space of 1 TB.
2 TB of additional storage
You can store 1,000,000 photos at 2MB file size at this available storage.
Or you may store 280 hours long 1080p video in this available storage.
Amazon Drive charges $11.99/month or $119.98/ year to offer you this additional space of 2TB.
You can purchase any of these plans as per your need and budget!
Features of Amazon Drive
Now that you have a basic idea about Amazon Drive and the storage plans that they offer, we can further explore some key features of Amazon Drive. When you plan to put your items over any drive, there is a list of questions that cross your mind. Will it be safe? Is there going to be any data leak? Will I lose my files? And the list is long.
Here, we will aim to solve all these questions and explain the features of Amazon Drive that will help you decide if you wish to go further with the purchase and selection.
File Sharing
Amazon Drive entitles you to upload and share files with your loved ones without the fear of losing important data and hampering the quality. Sending the data across various apps often fiddles with the quality of your photos and videos, and they get pixelated. Amazon Drive allows you to upload these files over the drive and then easily share them with your known ones without any hassle.
Storage issue resolved
Data storage is the biggest issue that most of us face these days. If the space available on your mobile is less, you may need additional space to keep your files in a safe place. Hard disks and pen drives may cost lots of money, and keeping them safe is another trouble. To avoid all these issues, you can opt to use Amazon Drive. You can upload your important files here and access them as and when required.
Amazon prints
Amazon print is a feature that Amazon Drive offers. This feature enables you to edit your photos and place orders for prints and photo books through the application. Once you place the order, Amazon delivers the item to your address that you use for shopping regularly on the Amazon app.
Multilingual support
The introduction of Amazon Drive was one step toward resolving the storage issues. Now after its introduction, another challenge that demanded attention was to make it understandable and reachable to people living in different parts of the country. For this, Amazon Drive introduced multilingual support. Using this multilingual support feature, you can access Amazon Drive in various regional languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, English, Japanese, and simplified Chinese.
Supports digital media players
You can access Amazon Drive through the Amazon Fire TV and the Amazon video application for Amazon. If you own any of these devices, you get entitled to browsing your photos and videos on a big TV screen. You can also view these photos and videos as a slideshow.
Amazon Drive Interface
There are many features that Amazon Drive tries to offer to all its users. The drive interface is friendly and easy to use. You can use Amazon Drive across:
- Web: The web service of Amazon Drive is available on all devices, be it PCs or computers. You can use standard web browsers to explore, upload, and access your content. Amazon, by default, sorts your photos according to the date they were taken. You can later modify the setting as per your convenience.
- Desktop: Amazon Drive also offers a desktop application for its users. You can use this application to access Amazon Drive for Mac and Windows. You can use this desktop application to drag and drop files from the system to the drive and upload them.
- Mobile: Amazon Drive has an application that you can download for free. You can upload your music, videos, photos, etc., and keep all the data safe here. Amazon Drive resolves all the major storage issues and eases your troubles.
Amazon Drive vs. Google Drive
As we talk about storage offerings, the name Google Drive always comes at the top of the list. It is famous and is used by a large number of people all across the globe. The popularity of Google Drive is not unknown to all of us. Let’s understand the difference between the two and unravel which one is a better option for cloud storage and other facilities.
Amazon Drive
Amazon Drive is cloud storage that Amazon provides to its users. You can use Amazon Drive for cloud storage, file backup, sharing, and hosting. You can access Amazon Drive using multiple devices. Here, you can access 5GB of free storage on Amazon Drive. Amazon Drive was launched in 2011 and is available in some selected countries.
Google Drive
Google Drive is a synchronization service that Google provides. It allows users to store their files and data. Here, the drive offers you 15 GB of free storage. The launching of Google Drive dates back to 2012 and is available worldwide. People use Google Drive for storing personal as well as professional data.
| Amazon Drive | Google Drive |
| It offers 5GB of free storage. | It provides 15GB of free storage. |
| Amazon charges $11.99/month for an additional 100GB of storage space. | Google charges $1.99/month for an extra 100GB of storage space. |
| It is available for use in selected countries. | It is available for users in most countries, except for a few like China, Iran, etc. |
| The file upload limit of the Amazon Drive is 2GB. | The file upload limit of Google Drive is 5TB. |
| Amazon Drive does not include any backup option. | Google Drive also provides a backup option. |
This table will give a clear and better understanding of the best storage option out of the two. You can choose the one you find the most suitable as per your budget and requirements.
How is Amazon Drive different from Amazon Photos?
Amazon Drive, as well as Amazon Photos, are cloud storage services. The only difference between the two is the features they offer. Let’s have a closer look and better understanding of this difference.
- Both Amazon Photos and Amazon Drive are cloud storage spaces. You can use Amazon Photos for photos and videos, while Amazon Drive is available for users to store all sorts of files.
- Amazon Photos allows you to edit, view, create, and share photos and videos, while you can use Amazon Drive for uploading, previewing, and sharing all sorts of files.
- Amazon Photos support most stock photos and video file types, including JPEG, MP4, PNG, etc. On the other hand, Amazon Drive supports file extensions such as PDF, ZIP, DOCX, MP4, JPEG, etc.
- The storage plan offered by the two is similar, i.e., 5GB is available for free, and the rest storage can be accessed by extra payment.
Security Features of Amazon Drive
While opting for Amazon Drive, you must have a question about the security features. Following is a short overview of all the safety features that Amazon Drive provides.
- Amazon Drive provides you with the option to enable two-factor authentication. You can enable it while setting up your Amazon Drive and secure your data with two-factor authentication.
- Amazon Drive provides both at-rest encryption and in-transit encryption.
- With Amazon Drive, you get access to a 256-bit encryption protocol.
- You do not get access to zero knowledge for safety with Amazon Drive.
This makes it clear that Amazon Drive is completely secure, and you can rely on it with your data and files.
Conclusion
Now that you have gone through the article, you must have gathered basic knowledge about Amazon Drive, its uses, pros, and cons. Amazon Drive aims to resolve your storage issues and provide a user-friendly and secure interface. It is accessible across various devices, although limited to some countries and regions.
You can use the 5GB space they offer for free and then expand the storage as per your requirements. Two-factor authentication ensures that only you can access your files, thus keeping your data safe. So, what are you waiting for? Log in to your Amazon account now and access Amazon Drive right now.
