Has anyone tried Amazon S3?

Amazon has a storage service called S3 where you pay a low price for keeping files there and a price for

bandwidth. I was wondering if anybody has ever tried it. I think it may be for companaies who have web

applications that need storage but i do not see why i couldn't use it for data backup.

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The price is:<br>

$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used.<br>

$0.20 per GB of data transferred.

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So i figured if i want to back up 10 gigs of pictures, it is $3.50 for the first month and then $2 thereafter.

So, at about $24 a year, it isn't a bad price for offsite, safe backup.

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What do you think?

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The link for the site is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261">here</a>

I have tried it for backup, using the Mac program JungleDisk, and indirectly, as I think the terrific photo sharing site SmugMug uses it. As I recall, it was very cheap for storage, but access can be expensive. So, that makes it ideal for backup.

I put my most important digital images there. It took days with JungleDisk to get them uploaded, but JungleDisk's queue facility is extremely well designed, and it just kept running and running (in the background) until the job was done.

--Marc

There are webhosts that will give you a website with 100GB storage and 1000GB of data transfer for $3.95/month. Wouldn't that be a better deal?

I don't suppose either of them are 100% secure, but I'd assume that they both have normal backup programs. I certainly wouldn't keep my only copy of anything on a remote server.

If I wanted to backup 10GB, I'd just write 3 DVDs (6 with duplicates to be safe) for a total cost of about $6.

The difference with S3 vs. a standard web host is the reliability and scalability. S3 is hosted using Amazon's extensive internal architecture and hardware, which means your data is as close as possible to perfectly protected.

If you're just looking to back up files, it's probably a lot more trouble than it's worth, since you could just burn 2 DVD copies and keep one at a friends house for much less...

But, if it makes you happy, then there's certainly nothing wrong with it in my opinion.

<i>The difference with S3 vs. a standard web host is the reliability and scalability. S3 is hosted using Amazon's extensive internal architecture and hardware, which means your data is as close as possible to perfectly protected.</i><p>

What good web hosts don't offer extensive internal architecture and hardware? Mine does, and it's tiny.

I think you'd be horrified at what most companies consider "extensive".

I bet with most hosts, you'd be lucky to have your data even backed up, much less mirrored or in some kind of recoverable RAID configuration.

I'm sure there are plenty of smaller companies out there who do a great job, but they can't approach the scale that amazon has put together with S3.

As I said, I'm not against either idea, just saying what the difference is.

Just to clarify my use of S3 for my "most important digital images:"

I use rotating FireWire drives, offline FireWire drives, and multiple levels of CD/DVDs. But, for these images, I decided an additional copy off somewhere in cyberspace, under Amazon's supervision, would be a good idea, too.

--Marc