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Amazon is offering a year of unlimited cloud storage for just $5

Amazon is offering a year of unlimited cloud storage for just $5

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Yet another spacious attic for all your digital detritus

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There are plenty of options for keeping your digital media safe and easily accessible in the cloud. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo all have services that will let you back up tons of old files. Amazon is a major player in providing cloud services to other companies and has leveraged that expertise to create offerings for average consumers and perks for its Prime subscribers. Today it's rolling out a limited-time offer just in time for Black Friday: $5 for unlimited online storage.

The deal may be of particular interest to users of Microsoft's OneDrive. Previously that company had been offering unlimited storage to Office 365 subscribers, but recently downgraded that to 1 TB of space, stating that a few extreme users were taking advantage of the system well beyond the needs of average users. "A small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings,” the company said. "In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average."

Google Drive has unlimited storage for people who are signed up through a work account, but caps free consumer accounts at 15GB before asking for payment. The copious amount of free storage out there from companies with other principle revenue streams explains why Dropbox, which makes all its money charging for storage, is in danger of losing its luster among investors.

If you've got a massive collection of files that you've been meaning to back up but didn't want to pay full freight, Amazon's current offer seems like a great opportunity to finally make that move. Just remember that the price changes back to the full $60 a year after the trial is over. And fair warning: even if you do finally get everything into the cloud, that's no guarantee you're actually going to feel motivated to organize it all.