Amazon Cloud Drive

Off Topic & General Discuss
#21

Ok…so basically you’re saying there is no need to encrypt the data that goes into ACD or GDive.

Do you encrypt your data? If we dont have to encrypt our data then I’d be sooo happy. I find encryption really tanks speeds.

ByteSized Hosting has had some clients who run ACD on their servers and Amazon has shut them down either for pirated content or geo-location issues…it’s unclear to the reason why. You can message https://www.reddit.com/user/Animazing on reddit for details. I discussed this with him via private messaging about a year ago.

#22

Isnt this the reverse? ACD is half of the GDrive costs.

#23

I use Arq 5 to encrypt my entire hard drive and ALL attached external drives from home. Arq encrypts before sending and scrambles all file names, etc. I use that to backup to ACD & also to google drive. I have a lot of TBs of unencrypted movies and TV shows on both…ALL 1080p Blu-Ray rips or best quality available.

I’m well aware of Animazing, his offerings, and reddit. I’ve been on there for many many years, been on all the highest level trackers for years and years and I DO read posts on the hot topics about seedboxes on reddit, datahoarders, and the tracker forum topics about it. I was on that reddit long before the prominent people posting there joined and became active. Animazing is not based in the US, and I’ve talked with him before briefly and like a lot of Europeans, he unfortunately has a very very biased and totally ridiculous view of US Laws and regulations on US corporations (and he was totally wrong and didn’t want to hear otherwise so I respectfully didn’t try his services after that). He (or any non-US based ACD user) shouldn’t be speaking on issues like this as it’s all assumption(!!). A LOT of people in Europe have been trying several (mostly) known methods to register ACD US accounts for the cheaper price (esp. without VAT) and the unlimited storage they can’t get otherwise so of course Amazon would ban those accounts when you’re lying about your info. Even US users that are using obviously fake personal details could get banned…I’m sure that’s hidden in the terms.

@RXWatcher: Yeah my mistake on the typo. Anyone reading my whole post would see that I did put the price for Google Apps for Work Unlimited at $10/month/user as their websites states and I confirm and ACD at $60 a year. (NOT the same as paying to increase Google Drive storage! >>> Please note this…SO many are confused when they try to upgrade their google drive storage only and see that $9.99/month get you 1TB). Google Apps for Work Unlimited requires your own domain name if you want the unlimited storage with less than 5 users.

#24

I think it would be very naive to store unencrypted your pirate movies, music and tv series with a company that sells movies, music and tv series.

Amazon, the same company that treats its employees like slaves (search for “the truth behind the click” if you want to see what its like to work for them), undercuts real businesses by selling at a loss - often forcing them to close down, all while paying no tax themselves.

So yes, lets trust Amazon to do the right thing. :expressionless:

One provider I did stumble over while reading up on this subject last night is OVH, they offer a service called Hubic which is 10 Tb for €50 which seems reasonable. They dont have any conflict of interest (selling media themselves), there is a hard limit rather than the pretend “unlimited” which everyone always knows isnt really unlimited. Even so, I would still encrypt anything stored in any cloud, but with them it seems more like a thing to do for peace of mind rather than an essential requirement.

Edit: Just started reading some reviews etc about Hubic before signing up. They have limited the speed of it to 10 Mbps, which is a shame but doesnt totally kill it.

1 Like
#25

Here’s my experience

I have an ACD account, i signed up for it with my European email, using my European postal address and European credit card. I used the exact same account a few years ago to sign up to Amazon Prime Instant Video and i used a smart dns service to watch it over here. I never experienced any geo blocking.

I use ACD by mounting the drive on my dedi, i don’t encrypt anything. I reckon if the content is lost, its lost, i can easily download it again.

The ACD is used for 2 things, a general back up of my dedi, and i also store all my watched tv series on it and point Plex to it. So for example, season 1 of Mr Robot is on ACD but season 2 is on my dedi. To anyone using my plex, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

I’ve been using it this way and unencrypted for around 5 or 6 months, without issue.

#26

I’m too paranoid to have all my data exposed in the cloud. Encrypting doesn’t cost me anything, so I might as well be safe rather than sorry.

#27

That’s interesting. Lets face it, they can tell exactly where you are when you sign up via your account address, credit card and IP address.

Cancelling a service that you allowed a paying customer to sign up for would be a huge slap in the face for that customer. Not only would they have to refund that money, future business would be in doubt. Especially in your case when you are a Prime member.

@KaMoS69

Its not paranoia when we all know we are actually being watched!

Amazon’s terms are a little vague

3.2 Usage Restrictions and Limits. The Service is offered in the United States. We may restrict access from other locations.

“Offered in the” to me means that the servers are in the USA. Others may read it so say that its offered only to the USA.

I think that given the service is free for the first 3 months, it doesnt harm to sign up and see what happens.

#28

@smilingheadcase

How did you sign up exactly?? I have followed the American Amazon cloud website where it says Unlimited. It asked me to sign in with my amazon e-mail and password.

It then took me to the UK cloud website and it shows I have 5 Gb of space only in “Manage storage”

I click on “change my plan” and it ONLY shows the UK pricing (aka expensive) and 1000 Gb being the maximum for £320 a year.

Looks like I’m not the only one:-

#29

Create a new general Amazon.com account, then log in as normal, and in the drop down list under “Hello Username, Your Account”, select Your Amazon Drive.

That should work.

#30

How does that and " i signed up for it with my European email, using my European postal address and European credit card. I used the exact same account a few years ago to sign up to Amazon Prime "

Go together? lol I actually have a .com account i used to use over a decade ago when it was actually cheaper to buy books from America + shipping than it was to get them locally!

#31

Its pretty simple really, i use one email for amazon.co.uk and another one for amazon.com, both accounts have the same postal address and credit card details attached.

My amazon.co.uk account uses a generic “.com” email address, and my amazon.com uses a “.ie” email address.

What don’t you understand?

#32

It doesnt work.

In my .com account I click on Unlimited Online Storage and it says

“This plan is currently not available for your country yet.”

Looks like you are lucky in that you signed up before they plugged the hole, but now you have to ask yourself will they continue to allow you to use it.

#33

Does anyone have a better tutorial than the amc.ovh blog?

I’ve had acd_cli running on my box for a long time, just to upload files to ACD, not to stream them. Uploading works fine, but I have no freaking idea how people are doing the streaming, and I’ve read all the documentation.

#34

It’s fairly simple. You’ll need acd_cli installed. All you do is use acd_cli to mount your Amazon Cloud Drive (ACD) to you server and Plex will be able to access and stream your files as if they were on the server itself.

The command will look something like this:

acdcli mount -ao /homeUSER/amazon

acdcli mount is the acd_cli command that mounts the drive.
-ao is important because it allows other users in the system to access the folder, e.g. Plex.
/homeUSER/amazon This is the location of the mount i.e. where you want your ACD to be mounted to.

It gets a little more complicated if you use encryption. I hope this helps. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

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#35

im located in australia i used a vpn to get unlimted amazon cloud drive storage and setup a box with ACD_CLI i got it working but it had issues with buffering my connection is a 100/40 connection but due to the data probably being stored in the USA or elsewhere it struggled to keep the stream doing if you lived near where the data was stored i would say you would have no issues at all

you also need to remount the drive every time you make changes to the directory

#36

If you make changes to the directory, just run the command “acd_cli sync” and it will update.

Works for me, if i upload content via the web browser and its not showing up on the mounted drive.

#37

What are the odds??? Amazon has announced today that Amazon Unlimited Cloud is now available in the UK. £55 a year. First 3 months trial for free! Woohoo

#38

Thanks for this info! It really got the wheels spinning in my brain and made me realize what the whole point of what I was doing was. Also the -ao is so important, and it’s often left out of tutorials.

I even got all this setup with ENCFS so all is encrypted and it works great. So thank you again for getting the ball rolling for me.

#39

Glad I could help. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a DM.

#40

rclone just dropped 1.33 too which has the mount and encryption.