Amazon Cloud Drive, unfortunately, doesn’t offer this capability. Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and even Apple’s iCloud Drive all feature local syncing capabilities, allowing me to both store files in the cloud and sync the latest versions of these files to my PC, Mac, smartphone, and tablet. It’s not enough that my files are stored in the cloud I also want real-time updates of local copies of those files on all of my devices, ensuring that I have access to the latest Excel spreadsheet or Photoshop image at all times. To me, services like Dropbox offer two important functions: storage and syncing. But I quickly found out, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, that Amazon Cloud Drive is “not the online storage service I’m looking for,” and it’s probably not the one you’re looking for, either.
After all, Amazon Web Services powers much of the modern Web, including bandwidth monsters like Netflix, and if any company can ensure adequate bandwidth, it’s Amazon. Other than experimenting with some photos via a Kindle Fire tablet, I had yet to really dive into Amazon Cloud Drive, which has operated since 2011. Upon learning of the “ unlimited storage” offer from Amazon for just $60 per year, however, I was hopeful that a good solution had finally arrived.
