In a somewhat unwelcome late Christmas gift, Amazon has announced an end of life for its Amazon Drive cloud storage service.
The platform is being replaced by Amazon Photos, a nearly identical cloud storage service, but one that offers less value to users and only allows uploads of video and photo content, rather than just files.
As loomed in 2022, the switch happened on New Year's Eve 2023, and so on How to nerd This means that even though the Amazon Drive interface is now installed on a farm, files uploaded before the shutdown remain accessible – and, crucially, downloadable.
A guide to retrieving your Amazon Drive files
It's not all bad news, though: users can find their migrated files in the “Folders” section of the Amazon Drive app.
This section may not be well organized: Drive also stores digital purchases and files sent remotely to Kindles. You'll probably find that the Anne Rice novel your ex-wife bought you in 2012 that you had to pretend was high literature.
However, there's another Christmas miracle waiting for us: Amazon apparently lets you keep these files forever. That's a promise from an evil company, so of course it could all change at any time. It's not an Immaculate Conception, more King Herod is throwing his weight around, so we recommend you pick up any files you think you might like.
Migrate to a new cloud storage provider
As it stands, Amazon Photos is a strange beast: a photo storage service aimed more at consumers who want to save vacation snaps than at companies who want to keep parts of potentially sensitive data safe. If you are a business owner, we highly recommend migrating to another cloud backup offering.
There are so many to choose from, with such different specialties (Amazon may have long given up on unlimited cloud storage, but other providers are willing to accommodate) that it's impossible to recommend just one or even a handful of providers. command. So we will make suggestions and you can make the decision.