AWS (Amazon Web Services) Import/Export is a limited beta program for moving large amounts of data into and out of Amazon's cloud services by using portable storage devices for transport. The cloud service customer can mail or ship the storage device and Amazon will transfer the data to a designated Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket in a secure facility, and then return the device to the sender.

According to Amazon, it would take over 80 days to upload just 1TB of data over a T1 connection. Bypassing the Internet allows a large collection of data to be uploaded to offsite storage in a reasonable amount of time. 

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Amazon has more information about AWS Import/Export.

22 Mar 2011