Amazon Cloud Drive vs External Hard Drive

Data storage has gone a long way since the days of tape drives, and there are now many ways to save your data. For most people who carry a lot of data with them, an external hard drive is a portable alternative that offers a very large capacity. But companies are now introducing services that aim to replace the external hard drive; like Amazon’s Cloud Drive. The main difference between an external hard drive and an Amazon Cloud Drive is that the Cloud Drive is a web-based solution unlike an external hard drive which is a physical device.

Since the Amazon Cloud Drive is a web-based service, you need to have access to the Internet in order to retrieve or store files. For most people, this is not a big problem since fast Internet connections are readily available. But for those who do not have access to a fast connection, an external hard drive is the only choice.

Getting an external hard drive typically means a single payment of $100 more or less for the actual drive. Amazon uses a rental model for the Cloud Drive. You get 5GB for free, and you pay $1 for every GB in excess of that every year. Given that drives do fail over time, the Amazon Cloud Drive is still more expensive than just buying a large capacity external hard drive.

But with the added cost, you also get some benefits. The biggest one is the assurance that your data will always be there. Because the data resides on Amazon’s servers, it is constantly backed up and protected against hardware failures. With external hard drives, you need to back up your data consistently. You never know when your external hard drive will get lost, get damaged, or just outright fail. Even if you back up your external hard drive weekly, you will still lose a few days’ worth of data in case the drive fails or is lost. This won’t happen with Amazon Cloud Drive. At worst, you will only lose a few hours’ worth of data if you’ve been uploading at the time of the error.

Summary:

1.Amazon Cloud Drive is a web-based storage service while an external hard drive is physical hardware.
2.Amazon Cloud Drive requires an Internet connection while an external hard drive doesn’t.
3.Amazon Cloud Drive is on a rental basis while an external hard drive needs to be purchased.
4.Amazon Cloud Drive is a more reliable data storage solution than an external hard drive.

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