Amazon is shutting down Amazon Drive at the end of 2023
Amazon customers who use the company's file storage service Amazon Drive are notified by email currently that Amazon will shut down the service at the end of 2023. A similar notification is displayed on the official Amazon Drive website.
In the email, Amazon informs Drive customers that support for uploading new files will be disabled on January 31, 2023. Customers who use Amazon Drive may continue to access files uploaded prior to that date, but the option to add new files or change existing ones is no longer available after January 31, 2023.
Amazon Drive customers have until December 31, 2023 to access their files and download them to their devices. After December 31, 2023, access to Amazon Drive is cut off for all customers.
Amazon suggests that customers keep photos and videos on Amazon Drive, as these are also accessible through Amazon Photos. Unlike Drive, Photos remains an Amazon service. Customers may access all their uploaded images and photos on the Amazon Photos website or in the application.
Customers who delete media on Amazon Drive will no longer have access to these on Amazon Photos, as both access the same storage for photos and videos.
Any files that are not media files will no longer be available after December 31, 2023. Customers are asked to export files to their devices before the shutdown data to avoid losing access to their files.
Amazon suggest that Drive customers use the website to download content, but recommends that customers use the Photos Desktop app to download and save files if downloading files through the web app is not feasible because of size limitations.
The web app supports selecting multiple files and folders for downloading. All it takes is to check folders and files on Amazon Drive and activate the download button to save them to the local system.
Here is the time line for the Drive shutdown:
- October 31, 2022 -- The Amazon Drive app is removed from Google Play and the App Store.
- January 31, 2023 -- Uploads to Drive are disabled.
- December 31, 2023 -- Amazon Drive is no longer accessible.
The applications continue to work, but Amazon won't release updates for the apps anymore. Eventually, these apps will stop working; this may happen prior to the official deprecation date or even earlier.
Amazon explains that it made the decision to deprecate Amazon Drive to "more fully focus" its efforts on Amazon Photos. Customers may access the FAQ that Amazon published to gain further assistance.
Amazon Drive alternatives
As far as Amazon Drive alternatives are concerned, there are plenty free and paid services available. Popular choices include Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive, which are both free in a base version, but also services such as Dropbox, Proton Drive and plenty of other services.
Now You: have you used Amazon Drive?
I have no sympathy for anyone who continues to hold onto their cloud belief. Make this experience a learning opportunity. All of the major tech businesses will eventually follow suit, and you’ll be rushing to buy a drive large enough to hold all of your data once that happens.
These days we where live is hard. Prepare to physically backup your whole fav data all over the years and save it in safe place. No one will steal those and none we would let ’em..soon.
The cloud is being shut down. This is a cause for celebration!
For many years, people have been urged to store their data in “the cloud”. They were told “the cloud” was safe and would last forever. Especially if the “cloud” was run by a large company such as Amazon. What could be more safer than to store your data in a large “cloud” run by Amazon?
But now the Amazon cloud is being shut down. It didn’t last very long. I have got VHS tapes which have lasted longer than “the cloud”.
Any fool who stored their data in Amazons cloud will now have to go through the stress of re-downloading all the data and finding somewhere else to store it before Amazon deletes all their precious data.
Meanwhile, my VHS tapes stay safely stored on a shelf and don’t require any subscription fees and won’t be remotely deleted by Amazon.
Yet again, “the cloud” has proven how totally unreliable it is.
Videotapes on your shelf – this refers more to your memories of how you watched these tapes in the circle of your loved ones.
you will not consider it strange if, say, chicken eggs run out in the summer market closest to you. You just go to another market and buy what you need.
And regarding what is recorded on your videotapes: maybe only your wedding is worth attention on those videotapes. And all other content in 99% of cases you can watch on Netflix.
Life changes faster every day. If we do not change in accordance with the requirements of the time, we will lose the advantages in obtaining what civilization can give us (this is a smart phone and a car or an airplane, which for our children seem to be basic needs).
The safe place to store your data is “the shelf” NOT “the cloud”!
Someday in the future, Amazon will release a new product called “the shelf”. You stick it to a wall and it’s the ideal place to store your data.
Libraries around the world have been storing their data on “the shelf” for centuries and they never got deleted.
Hey anonymouse, tell that to the Library at Alexandria.
> “If a rich company such as Amazon is shuttng down it’s cloud then Google, Microsoft and Apple cloud will be next to get shut down.”
Everything should shutting down but Twitter, the insane people should write their delusions almost one time per day, in a daily basis of hate, anger and anxiety, all well mixed and cooked…
Even God can have a bad day.
There are plenty of alternatives; One Drive is relatively inexpensive with a generous 250GB file size limit makes it a positive contender in paid storage services. I sincerely wish gHacks, after announcing news such as the “shutting down of Amazon Drive,” would have a follow-up article identifying the “best” free and paid services available.
Two sites that do the legwork:
https://www.lifewire.com/free-cloud-storage-1356638
I like Degoo and Mega and MediaFire.
Another site provides links and information for other services, many of them the same:
https://www.cloudwards.net/what-is-the-onedrive-file-size-limit/
I find myself using Dropbox free for many small items. Google Drive is great for embedding a PDF file on a website.
And when the user dies, who will inherit all of those useless files, except the ones with security information? Make sure the Executor knows how to get to what will be most important to the heirs.
If a rich company such as Amazon is shuttng down it’s cloud then Google, Microsoft and Apple cloud will be next to get shut down.
I also wish an article about the most valuable cloud storage currently available! :]
No cloud storage is valuable, because eventually they will shut the service down and delete all your data.
If a large company such as Amazon can shut the cloud down, the Google, Microsoft and Apple will be next.
@Anonymous, first of all thanks for your highest level of knowledge about everything and to teach us all how the things really are in the real world. We couldn’t live without it, seriously, and you probably deserve our greetings for such a long time. The second thing, with your permission and always from the mutual respect that a clever guy like you deserve, I wish to explain you only one thing about the distance between Onedrive and Windows OS:
* The fact that an operating system is the most used in the world does not mean that it is the best, it is as if everyone took the same brand of paint and believed that they were Picasso or Dali for a brief and exciting, childish and exaggerated moment of unconsciousness.
However, thank you again for turning on the light and let us to see the real true about Windows.
Anyway, as I said before, Onedrive by Microsoft, by now, is the best free cloud storage and also the premium cloud storage that the money can afford, for sure. Hopefully I wonder that Microsoft will learn some day to build a better Windows than W11. Please, have a good day.
@John G.
Except that Windows is indeed the best os for a general user. An user who wants to browse internet, consume multimedia, write and print a document from time to time, use aplications and maybe even play some games. It will work for 99% of time and one can get support easily either by sellers service or at every IT spot or even friends/kids/coworkers can help one out. Linux on the other hand, requires learning curve even for basic usage and installation, does not work out of the box very often and has zero support options with rare exceptions. Linux is great for an user who knows what he will be dealing with. MS is not perfect, Windows is crap from time to time, but still superior for daily use.
m3city, I disagree. Several Linux distros are just as easy to install and do basic usage as Windows. You are probably biased: you already learn how to do that on Windows, then you think that other options are harder.
@m3city, that’s the way to expose the ideas. You’re right, Windows is easy to install, use and maintain, however W11 is a terrible thing if you have tasted first the W10, today the best OS from Windows. Anyway here at Ghacks we have at least five reviews of McOS by @Ashwin, pretty good articles that show us all how to release an OS to the users, with lot of features. Again, thanks for the way that you choose to expose your ideas! :]
The best site for these purposes is Onedrive by Microsoft. They don’t know how to build a good OS, however they know how to store what you need to store with the enough security at long term. Thanks for the article.
I have a bad experiences with OneDrive. I mean lost files, blocked directories, blocked files. So I don’t consider it like safe storage.
If you are using Onedrive you must wait and let the PC turn on until the files are uploaded!
wow, I am sorry but why are clueless people like you on the internet? Sounds more like a troll comment from someone who apparently live in an alternative reality.
“don’t know how to build a good OS”? Windows is the easiest and simplest Operating System available, you can run games, most professional software, it is compatible with most hardware and you don’t have to do much to run it okay.
It is clueless people apparently break everything and then complain, and it is people like you who apparently don’t understand that an Operating System is meant to launch application, not to stare at the UI or care about a button that they changed of place.
If Windows runs most software, most drivers without issues, then how is that not a good Operating system? You literally get drivers for anything without many issues, even for old hardware that was available 6+ years ago. Can you say the same about the other few desktop operating systems?
You can even get it for free, so the price is not even an excuse to call Windows a “not good OS” when it does everything okay.
You are the ones who would rather give up performance and complain to developers why they are not building a native Linux or wine compatible application, instead of just running them the way they were meant to in the operating system they were meant to be ran.
I remember when Pablo Vazquez decided to use Windows for the Blender Today streams and he got attacked for that by pathetic people, after that, even if he went back to using Linux, he understood all the negative and trash talk he made about Windows was total BS, and now he doesn’t say anything bad about Windows, ignorant fanboys or anti Windows should just stay quiet, and only talk when there is really an alternative to run all the software, professional and non-professional and videogames in another OS the same way you do in Windows. It is not perfect, because nothing is, but it works and that’s all that matters, you don’t even need to use Windows UI for much, you can replace a lot of it, and the point of Windows is to launch apps anyway and run them, so if your complain is with Windows itself, it’s just ignorance, and if your complaint is about Windows 3rd party apps, then it is even more ignorant.
Linux is trouble after trouble and terminal stuff, Apple is more locked down every time and people and developers had to deal with Apple change of processors once again, plus you don’t get all the hardware available and meant for Windows.
Live in reality, maybe you use a Linux computer and you only use it to check emails and browse garbage sites, but professionals using Windows are happier with it than brainwashed fanboys think.
Anonymous, so much nonsense from a Windows fanboy. BTW, Windows is not free: not free as in freedom, and not free as in beer either. You have to pay for a license. If you buy a PC that has Windows preinstalled, then the price includes it, you are still paying for it: the same hardware would be cheaper with no OS.
What Microsoft has given for free (as in beer) are some updates between Windows versions, e.g. if you had a license for Windows 7, you could get a license for Windows 10.
You may also be confused because nowadays an unactivated Windows will be mostly usable. But the EULA still requires you to have a genuine license.
BTW, I use Linux at home and at work, and my job would be much more difficult with Windows.
Geez mate, triggered much? Let the kid have his fun.
I’ll keep using offline storage. If I had to keep my files on someone else’s server, I would rather lose all of my data.
@Quibi nobody is saying you should use cloud storage if you don’t want to, stop pretending you are relevant in the world and pretend the world will crumble only because you are not storing your information in “someone else’s server”.
Maybe you should get off the internet, I mean, you are leaving too many traces behind about you in “someone else’s server”, you just make it seem like anyone would care about your documents or photos, companies want money, that’s why they offer these services.
Lose your data all you want, get off the internet or keep using it pretending you are not in someone else’s server leaving information about you behind, especially when you probably have a lot of smart devices in your home and you need your phone even to switch lights off and on.
@Loki
What a weird, mental response to someone who wants to keep their files local. Lol. Geeze. Calm down mate.
Society is collapsing in real time.