Amazon Drive is due to end on December 31, 2023. Will ODrive continue to work syncing Amazon photos ?
Update:
Amazon has officially disabled all Amazon Drive/Photos API access. odrive no longer has any way to access Amazon Drive/Photos data.
Any issues encountered with Amazon storage will need to be discussed with Amazon, directly.
You can refer to their page, here, for more information:
Amazon.com: FAQ: Deprecation of Amazon Drive
Hi @philip.waterman,
It isn’t clear what exactly will happen, API-wise, once Amazon Drive officially retires. Amazon has somewhat abandoned the API they had for Amazon Drive, and they don’t have one specifically for Amazon Photos.
We’ve actually had to do some tweaking and reverse-engineering just to keep things working with Amazon Drive. We will need to see what happens once they remove “Amazon Drive” support, but we’ll try to keep it working as much as is possible.
Amazon’s FAQ for this: Amazon.com: FAQ: Deprecation of Amazon Drive
For our recommended procedure for using odrive to migrate off of Amazon Drive, please refer to this post:
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Thanks for the prompt response. Still a little while before it ends, fingers crossed it will continue to work!
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Amazon has recommended that Amazon Drive users migrate their files to a AWS S3 Bucket. Since odrive supports S3, this is a fairly easy transition. I’m actually watching the last of my files syncing to an S3 bucket right now…
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Hi, I have encrypted my files using odrive.
How do I get an AWS S3 bucket? Are the prices reasonable?
How do I transfer my encrypted files to S3?
Thanks
Is there a tutorial for how we can move our stuff from Amazon Drive to an S3 bucket using odrive? I have about 10TB of files.
Hi @dearsina,
We don’t have a tutorial available for migrating off of Amazon Drive, specifically, but we do have a recently updated post about migration here:
Amazon drive is shutting down access after December 31 2023 for any files other than photos.
What will happen to sync integrations beteeen Amazon drive and the pc desktop? my understanding is photos and videos will still use this space but files will not and should be downloaded and removed before end of 2023.
I guess I need to find another online provider.
With shutdown only a few months away has Amazon provided any additional information?
Hi @joeargyle,
I believe this Amazon page has the latest information: Amazon.com: FAQ: Deprecation of Amazon Drive
Just received this in an email from Amazon:
“We understand that you have used Odrive to store information on Amazon Drive. Starting November 16, 2023, you will no longer be able to back up your files to Amazon Drive using Odrive. Additionally, Amazon Drive will not be accessible after December 31, 2023.”
Hate to see this going away, but I know its Amazon’s decision. Any thoughts from Odrive on workarounds via Amazon Photos’ backend, for photos only?
Hi @jrf2y,
I don’t think so, unfortunately. My understanding is that they are shutting down the API available to us, entirely. This means we won’t be able to make Amazon storage requests to them anymore.
So it seems like, on 6th Jan 2024 I’m still be able to sync my photo via Odrive to Amazon Photos, Though I can not upload photos via Amazon Cloud Drive, does it mean Odrive is future proof now? Please let us know so we can continue using Odrive for Amazon Photos.
Hi @gowerdhan.anant,
Amazon has not indicated that they have changed their decision. You should not count on it continuing to work with odrive, even if it is right now.
As of yesterday and onwards, it appears Amazon shut the services again. Unable to upload/download from their services.
The message we receive from odriveagent is the following:
23 Jan 06:25:03PM INFO (Retry 0) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 162.999947786 seconds.
23 Jan 06:25:03PM INFO (Retry 5) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 240.999985933 seconds.
23 Jan 06:27:46PM INFO (Retry 1) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 82.9999799728 seconds.
23 Jan 06:29:04PM INFO (Retry 6) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 217.999927998 seconds.
23 Jan 06:29:09PM INFO (Retry 2) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 85.9999740124 seconds.
23 Jan 06:30:36PM INFO (Retry 3) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 105.99998498 seconds.
23 Jan 06:32:22PM INFO (Retry 4) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 176.999936104 seconds.
23 Jan 06:32:43PM INFO (Retry 7) Amazon Drive/Photos is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Waiting 14.9999790192 seconds.
23 Jan 06:32:58PM INFO Amazon Drive is throttling/having service issues while attempting list_folder. Exhausted retries
This makes the move to another service a bit more complex since we need to have a machine that has all files locally to push to the new remote… That’s unfortunate, I can’t run this from my VPS where my bandwidth is way bigger than home.
Hi @cazzoo,
Yeah, they seem to have shut it down last week, on Wednesday, at least for myself and some other folks.
I haven’t tried their Photos desktop client in a long time, but supposedly you should be able to still use it to download your Amazon Drive files.
True but unfortunately not available from my VPS which is CLI only 
Running the CLI version had worked so well. I ran it on my Linux-based NAS, where all my photos are stored. Once amazon shutdown the service I tried a few workarounds.
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Android VM on NAS: I installed an Android VM on the NAS, mapped my photo library to the camera folder in the VM, and used the native Android app for uploads. It worked but was resource-intensive, running an additional OS just for photo uploads wasn’t ideal.
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Sync to PC/Mac: I tried syncing NAS folders to a PC/Mac and using Amazon’s desktop clients for uploads. This seemed straightforward but proved problematic. The desktop apps were barely functional, and Amazon eventually pulled them from their website. (they’re back now) I didn’t like relying on my PC for uploads & at the time it didn’t appear that Amazon was interested in maintaining the desktop clients.
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Old Android Device: I settled on syncing files to a cheap $50 Android phone I had used for a past development project. It works surprisingly well—photos are synced from the NAS to the phone, and the Amazon Photos app handles the upload. It’s a dedicated solution with the only downside being limited storage on the device. Every couple months, I delete old photos from the phone. It doesn’t impacting already uploaded photos & there are Android apps that will automate this task.
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