If you have an Amazon S3 account you’re using to backup your data, you might want an easy way to manage it. CloudBerry Explorer is a free app that runs on your desktop an provides an easy way to manage your S3 account.

Installation and Setup

Just download and install the application with the defaults.

When the application launches you’ll be prompted to enter in your username and email to get a registration key. Or you can continue on by clicking Register later.

Now you will want to set up your Amazon S3 account. Click on File \ Amazon S3 Accounts.

Double-click on the New Account icon.

Next enter in your Amazon account Access and Secret keys, select SSL if you want, then click the Test Connection button.

Provided everything was entered correctly, you’ll see the Connection Success screen, just close out of it.

Browse and Manage files

Once you have your account setup through the Explorer, you can start viewing and managing your files on S3. The left pane shows your S3 buckets and stored files, while the right side shows your local computer. This allows you to manage your files in your Amazon S3 buckets directly from your desktop!

It’s very easy to use, and you can drag and drop files from your computer to the S3 account or vice versa.

There is also the ability to transfer files between Amazon S3 accounts from within the explorer.

Go into Tools and Content Types and you can control the file types by adding, removing, or editing them. If you end up messing something up along the lines, you can always select Reset to defaults and everything will be back to normal.

There is a multiple tabbed view so you can easily keep track of your different accounts and local machine.

It allows the ability to create new storage buckets directly in the Explorer.

Or you can delete buckets as well…

Different actions can be accessed from the toolbars or by right-clicking and selecting from the context menu.

Here we see a cool option that lets you move your data inside Amazon S3. It is faster and doesn’t cost money by moving the files to your computer first, then to another account. However, if you want data moved to your local machine first, you have that option as well.

Not all features are available in the free version, and if it’s not, you’ll be prompted to purchase a license for the Pro version. We will have a comprehensive review of the Pro version in the near future. 

If you ever need help with CloudBerry Explorer, go to Tools \ Diagnostics. It will run a quick diagnostics check and you can send the information to the CloudBerry team for assistance.

Delete Files from Amazon S3

To delete a file from you Amazon S3 account, simply highlight the files or folder you want to get rid of then click Delete on the toolbar. You can also right-click the file and select Delete from the Context Menu.

Click Yes to the confirmation dialog box…

Then you can watch the progress as your files are deleted in the bottom section of the explorer.

Conclusion

CloudBerry Explorer free version has several neat features that will allow you easy and basic control over you Amazon S3 account. The free version may be enough for basic users, but power users will want to upgrade to the pro version, as it includes a lot more features.

Using the free version allows you to get a feel for what CloudBerry Explorer has to offer, and is a good starting point.

Keep in mind that Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the price of data stored. The price drops from $0.15 per GB to only $0.10 per GB.

If you’re a Windows Home Server user, check out our review of CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for WHS.

Download CloudBerry Explorer Free for Amazon S3