LinLog

This entry started out as a quick discussion of consolidating my photos onto Amazon Cloud Drive.  However, that didn't happen.  So now this entry is about why.

This started out as an attempt to clean up my hard drive.  I have a 1TB hard drive in my desktop, divided into two partitions: 100GB for my system "C: drive" and the rest of it allocated to assorted data.  The problem is that my C: drive was down to less than 5GB free, so it was time to do some clean-up.

Part of my problem was that my locally synced cloud storage was all in my home directory on the C: drive, including Cloud Drive.  So the plan was to move my Cloud Drive folder to the D: drive and, in the process, move a bunch of my older photos into Cloud Drive.  After all, I've complained about Cloud Drive, but now that Amazon offers unlimited photo storage to Prime members, why not take advantage of it?

Well, I'll tell you why - because it doesn't work, that's why.  For starters, the desktop Cloud Drive app doesn't provide any way to set the local sync directory.  Luckily, I did find that there's a registry key for that that you can set manually.  So I did that, moved my Cloud Drive folder, and restarted the Cloud Drive app.  And then I waited.  And waited.  And waited some more for Cloud Drive to upload the newly added photos.  However, when I came back the next morning, the systray icon said that Cloud Drive was up to date, but when I looked at the website, my new photos weren't there.

OK, so plan B: try downloading the latest version of the Cloud Drive desktop app.  My version was from March, so maybe there were somce improvements since then. 

And here's problem number two: the new app isn't the same as the one I have.  As far as I can tell Amazon no longer offers a desktop sync app.  Now they just have a "downloader/uploader" app.  It's not sync, though - the process is totally manual.  And I can't find any link to the version I have.  Presumably it's been replaced by this lame uploader app.  I notice that the Cloud Drive website now omits any mention of sync and talks about accessing your data on your computer through the website.

OK, so no upgrade.  Plan C: try to get the version I have working.  That didn't work out, though.  I didn't have the installer anymore, so reinstalling was out of the question.  I tried deregistering the app and resyncing my cloud data, but now that was just broken.  Cloud Drive synced part of my documents folder, then just stopped and reported that it was up-to-date.

At that point, I decided to just give up.  I'd been thinking about switching to OneDrive anyway.  It works well enough and fixes the problems I have with Cloud Drive.  It also gives me 30GB of free storage and has pretty reasonable rates for upgrades - $2/month for 100GB or 1TB for $7/month including an Office 365 subscription.  Plus I've already got it set up on my desktop, laptop, phone, and tablet, so it's just a matter of getting my data into it.

So that's what I did.  I changed my OneDrive location to my D: drive by unlinking and relinking the app (which is required for Windows 7 - Windows 8.1 is much easier) and then moved over the pictures from my Cloud Drive as well as the old ones I wanted to consolidate.  Hopefully that will work out.  It's going to tak OneDrive a while to sync all that data - over 10GB - but it seems to be going well so far.  And unlike Cloud Drive, as least OneDrive has a progress indicator so you can tell that something is actually happening.

As for Cloud Drive, I think I'm pretty much done with that.  I'll probably keep the app on my phone, as it provides a convenient second backup of my photos and also integrates with my Kindle, but I'm not even going to try to actively manage the content anymore.  It seems that Amazon is moving away from the desktop to an all-online kind of offering.  That's all well and good, but it's not really what I'm looking for at the moment.  Too bad.