DragonDisk is a free Amazon S3 file management client for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The program can be used to backup, share and organize files in an interface that looks similar to that of many ftp clients.

The first thing that you need to do after installing the software is to add at least one S3 account to the account list. Click on File > Accounts to open the account management window. A click on New opens another window where you need to enter account related information. This includes the account name, access key, secret key, if SSL is enabled and several other options under the advanced tab.

Once you have configured the account you can log in using the Root pulldown menu on the left or right side of the software. The account name should be listed there along with all local storage devices.

You can load a second Amazon S3 account or display the contents of a local hard drive in the second part of the interface.

All files and folders are displayed by default. You can use filters to limit names or extensions in the file listing.

Once connected, you can copy files to or from the Amazon S3 storage, edit files, change permissions or metadata.

Another interesting option is the ability to create sync jobs that can be run regularly. You could use it to make a local backup copy of your Amazon storage or specific files stored there.

DragonDisk supports versioning, external buckets, reduced redundancy storage as well as various compression and encryption algorithms.

Interested users can download the free application from the official program website.

As with any web service, when the volume of data increases, the complexity increases as well. There arises a strong need to manage the data effectively on you Amazon S3 account. Many vendors have developed third-party S3 management tools to simplify S3 account administration and usage for users.

Amongst the most popular S3 management tools are CloudBerry Explorer Pro (developed by CloudBerry Lab, free version available as well), S3Fox (developed by Suchi Software Solutions) and S3Hub. In this article, we do a head-to-head comparison between the mentioned S3 management tools.

CloudBerry Explorer

CloudBerry Explorer lets you manage your Amazon S3 and CloudFront accounts. The tool has two versions – Free and Pro. With the Pro version, you get access to CloudBerry Lab’s professional support and all your queries are answered within 48 hours. For a detailed listing of features of CloudBerry explorer, refer the Head-to-Head Comparison Table below.

S3Fox

S3Fox is a Mozilla FireFox extension for Amazon S3 developed by, a company specializing in developing FireFox Extensions. S3Fox runs in a FireFox browser tab and looks very similar to most FTP clients which follow the dual-pane layout.

S3Hub

S3Hub is Mac OS X only client for Amazon S3. Even if you do not have an S3 account, you can use S3Hub to view other users’ public buckets. It offers limited functionality thorough a neat and easy to use single pane interface.

Head-To-Head Comparison

We compare CloudBerry Explorer, S3Fox and S3Hub in terms of ease of use, features, security and the overall value they offer to users.

[table id=1 /]

Conclusion

Cloudberry Explorer offers several features that the other two programs do not offer. It is on the other hand a commercial program. Users should take a look at the additional options offered by the pro version. Especially the premium support could be worth the money. But that’s on the other hand only valid if Windows is the operating system of choice.

Are you using other tools to manage Amazon S3 data? Let us know in the comments.

This article is a guest contribution by Pavel Bondarchuck. Entrepreneur, founder CloudBerry Lab, developer of CloudBerry Explorer freeware for Amazon S3 and CloudBerry Online Backup

Each can then be accessed like any other folder in the Windows operating system. Integrating Google Docs would for example display all documents that are stored in that service on the local computer desktop. Gladinet will automatically synchronize the folders whenever data is edited, added or removed from one of the installed data storage services.

New online storage services and applications are added by providing authentication information in a simple form, usually the username and password to access the service online. Some, like WebDav servers require an url, IP or additional information besides the basic authentication data.

Gladinet runs in the Windows system tray on the local computer system from where it can be accessed and configured. It only takes a few clicks to add a new online storage service in the software. The professional and premium editions of the service add new features to the software including:

• Advanced Task Scheduler/Manager (Run Once or Recurring with Pause, Resume and Reschedule Support)
• Incremental Backup to Mounted Cloud Storage (with File Type Filtering*)
• Advanced Download/Upload Acceleration Technology (Compression, Chunking, Parallel Uploads/Downloads, Bandwidth Throttling)
• Encrypted Local Profile and In-Memory-Only Profile for Better Security
• IIS/Apache Support (Avoid Port 80)

Users who regularly work with the previously mentioned cloud storage providers might want to give Gladinet a try.

Goodsync provides the typical left / right interface that many file synchronization software programs use. One interesting aspect is that it can not only be used to keep files in sync but also to backup them. Both operations are started as so called jobs. A job consists of a few steps that the user has to configure.

A file synchronization requires the selection of two folders that should be kept in sync. This can be used to sync emails, documents, music and anything practically anything else that is needed in more than one folder.

The analyze button will scan both directories and display the folders, files, sizes and additional information of both sides. The program will also list the space requirements on both hard drives if the synchronization is started. All files and the direction that they are copied will be shown as well.

Goodsync can also change the display mode so that only conflicts, errors and other information such as the sync state will be displayed.

Users can finetune the process before starting the synchronization. It is for example possible to exclude folders or files from synchronization or change their direction. The default sync direction is a two-way sync but it is possible to change that to a one-way sync easily in the options.

Filters can be used to exclude certain files or folders from the synchronization. One of the most important aspects of a file synchronization software is the support of storage space. GoodSync supports synchronization and backups on local hard drives, network drives, ftp, sftp, Amazon S3, WebDav and WinMobile hardware. It is therefor no problem to sync files from ftp or sftp to the local computer.

Once everything has been configured according to your wishes you can the automatic options. It’s much like a scheduler. You can set the interval or event when the file synchronization software should analyze or sync files and what the software should do if conflicts are encountered.

The options are also the place to create global filters and to change other options like the buffer size or if locked files should be copied.

Experienced users will like the sheer amount of command line options that are provided by the file synchronization software. There is practically a switch for every option of the software to synchronize or backup files. It is possible to import or export the job list to run it on multiple computers.

Every user is able to create file synchronization or backup jobs with GoodSync in a few easy steps. Experts will love all the settings and options to tweak the software.

Five licenses of GoodSync are up for grabs. To win one simply leave a comment and tell us what you would sync or backup with it.