There are so many options for cloud backup storage today, but Amazon just announced a great plan for their Amazon Prime subscribers. Unlimited Photo Storage with Amazon Prime. Ive been an Amazon Prime subscriber for a few years now and the perks just keep coming to make it worth the price of the membership. Not only do you get FREE two-day shipping, but you also get access to access to the Kindle Owners Lending Library, Prime Instant Video (a Netflix competitor), and Prime Music, among other things listed here.

There are 3 ways to upload your photo archive to Amazon’s Cloud Drive.

Web Uploader

Amazon offers a basic web uploader for you to drag-and-drop your images into the browser. Built as part of Amazons Cloud Drive program, you can log in and manage your photos from anywhere with an internet connection at www.amazon.com/clouddrive/.

Mobile App

Amazons Cloud Drive Photos app sports an Auto-Save feature which backs up all of your mobile phone pictures. Unlike iCloud and Photostream, you’ll never have to worry about your 1,000 most recent photos being deleted. Amazon provides a safe and secure copy of your files available from anywhere with an internet connection. You can download the app for both Android or iOS. Google+ also offers an auto-save photo uploader, without the storage cap that you get with Google Drive.

Desktop Uploader

If you have PC, and a large collection of images that you want to upload to Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photos, then the best way is to use the Desktop Uploader. The Mac version is still under development and should be released soon.

Your photos are then stored to the Amazon Cloud Drive in their full, original version, meaning the images aren’t compressed and no quality is lost.

Supported File Types

You can upload both photos and videos to Amazon Cloud Drive. The preferred file types are listed below. You can upload file types that are not on this list, but they won’t be viewable in any app or web browser and they don’t count towards the unlimited storage.

For photos:

  • .bmp
  • .gif
  • .jpeg
  • .jpg
  • .png
  • .raw (Note: .raw files are different than camera raw files like .nef or .cr2)
  • .tif
  • .tiff

For videos:

  • .mp4 (including mov, 3gp, m4v)
  • .avi (including divx)
  • .mts (mpeg transport stream)
  • .mpg (mpeg program stream)
  • .asf/.wmv
  • .flv
  • .ogg

Backing up your photos is such an important process. I always recommend local solutions like Drobo, but having multiple backups is a good thing. In the event of a catastrophe, at least you have you’ll be able to save some of your photos using Amazon as your offsite backup. Without being able to upload my raw Nikon files, I’m only using Amazon Cloud Storage as to store my finalized high-resolution JPEG photos.

Amazon offers a 30-day trial of Prime, then costs $99 per year. If you don’t want to become an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can still join Amazons Cloud Drive program and upload your photos. Just by signing up, you’ll get 5GB free. Paid plans start at $10/year for 20GB and go up to $500/year for 1TB of space.