How AvastorX works, what it costs, and exactly what it does — and doesn't do — with your files. No fine-print surprises.
$4 a month for each 500GB of storage — flat, no tiers. Annual billing is 10× the monthly price ($40 a year per 500GB), so you get two months free. Usage is rounded up to the nearest 500GB block.
Every Oyen Digital drive comes with 1TB of AvastorX storage, free for a year. Redeem the activation card in the box — activate online here.
Yes. While you're in your free period, each additional card you redeem extends your free year — two drives means 1TB free for two years, three drives for three. Capacity doesn't stack (each card grants the same 1TB), and three years is the maximum; a card you can't use yet stays valid for later.
We email you 30 days and 7 days before it ends. If you let it lapse, your files stay safe and downloadable — we don't delete them for non-payment — and uploads pause until you add storage or free up space. Paid storage starts at $4 a month for 500GB.
New uploads are refused with a clear message until you add storage or free space; downloads keep working. The storage meter warns you from 80% full. Version history counts toward your usage; files in your Trash do not.
Paid storage is a standard subscription — it renews automatically, monthly or annually, and you can update your card, view invoices, or cancel any time from the Storage page (Manage billing).
Yes. Files travel over an encrypted connection and are stored encrypted at rest with AES-256. Your password is never stored in readable form.
We do — keys are managed server-side, the same approach Dropbox and Google Drive take. That's what makes previews, share links, and browser restores work, and it means there's no key for you to lose. AvastorX doesn't offer customer-held-key encryption; if that's a requirement for your work, you'd want a tool built specifically around it.
Your files are isolated to your account and are never shared with anyone unless you create a share link. Passwords — your account password and any you set on share links or file requests — are stored only as bcrypt hashes, so we can't read them.
On Backblaze B2 cloud storage, in Backblaze's US-East region, in a dedicated AvastorX bucket. Account and file metadata live in a Postgres database hosted on AWS (Ohio), and the web app runs on Vercel. Downloads come to you directly from Backblaze over time-limited, signed URLs.
Backup first. Auto-backup watches the folders you choose and copies changes one way — from your computer up to the cloud, usually within a minute. Nothing flows back down automatically, and deleting a file on your computer never deletes your cloud copy. That's the difference from two-way sync: a mistake on your machine can't propagate into your backup.
Yes, but it isn't two-way sync. If you add the same folder from more than one computer, everything combines into one cloud folder — changes still never flow back down to either machine.
Mac and Windows. The Mac app is a universal build that runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel. There's also a full web dashboard, so you can reach your files from any modern browser.
A standard exclusion list applies to every backup: system folders (on Windows, the Windows folder, antivirus data under ProgramData, and each user profile's AppData folder, plus Windows-managed files like pagefile.sys at the drive root; on Mac, the macOS system directories) and temporary or partial-download files (.tmp, .temp, .crdownload, .partial, .part, .download). Everything else you point it at is backed up.
Final Cut libraries (.fcpbundle), Photos libraries, and Logic projects are uploaded as one sealed .zip per bundle, so a library's hundreds of internal files arrive as a single object. The desktop app does the sealing: it checks it can read every file inside first, and fails the upload rather than store a partial library. In a browser without the desktop app, bundles up to about 4 GB are sealed in the page and larger ones are refused with instructions. When you download one back, you get that zip — double-click it to unpack the bundle. Bundles can't be sent through a file-request upload link — compress the bundle in Finder first and send the .zip.
Photo and video libraries are live databases. A backup that copies one file by file, while the app that owns it is running, can read different parts of it at different moments. The result is the quiet failure: a library that copies without error, opens without complaint, passes every structural check — and is missing work you had already saved before the backup started. Nothing about the file looks wrong, which is why this kind of loss is usually found much later, by someone opening the restore.
AvastorX checks for it. Before and after it copies a library, it reads the library's own write markers; if they moved, the copy did not catch a single moment in time. That copy is thrown away and taken again — up to three attempts, after which the backup reports the library as busy rather than store a copy it can't stand behind. It costs one extra read per library, and it is on by default. Verified against working Final Cut, Photos and Logic libraries.
Yes, and that is the honest cost of sealing. Because the library goes up as a single archive, a change anywhere inside it means a new archive: one trimmed clip and a full re-cut are the same 42 GB upload. What you get for it is that every copy in your backup is one complete library taken at one moment, never a library assembled from parts that were copied at different times. Uploading only the changed parts of a sealed library is on our list.
Until then, two things make it liveable: an unchanged library is skipped entirely — it re-uploads when it changes, not on every scheduled run — and scheduled backups run at whatever hour you set, so a large library can go up while you are not competing with it for bandwidth.
The archive carries the bundle's files and its folder structure. What it does not carry: extended attributes — the extras macOS attaches alongside a file, including Finder colour tags, custom icons, and the per-file records of which apps you have granted access. Nor do symbolic links inside the bundle survive intact; Final Cut's self-referencing .fcpcache link, for instance, comes back as an empty file. No zip round trip preserves any of this, for any file — it is a property of the format, not of AvastorX. If it matters to your workflow, tell us and it moves up the list.
Yes — that's the point. AvastorX detects your external drives, backing one up is one click, and there's no extra tier or per-drive fee. You can restore a drive's backup to the same drive or to any folder you choose.
Network drives and NAS don't appear in the drive list — they're already remote storage. SD cards don't appear either: copy your cards into a folder on your machine and let auto-backup pick them up from there.
Three ways. Download individual files from the browser. Select many and download a ZIP — in the browser that's capped at 500 files and roughly 600MB per ZIP. Or use the desktop app, which has no size cap: it streams any selection, or a whole drive restore, straight to your disk, back to the original drive or to any folder you pick.
If a file can't be fetched mid-restore, the desktop app names it in the completion report — a restore never silently drops files.
Yes. When a changed file is uploaded over an existing one, the previous copy is kept as a version. You choose how many to keep — 0, 2, 4 (the default), or 10 — in Preferences. Restoring a version keeps your current copy as a version too, so it's reversible. Versions count toward your storage. If you turn versioning off, an overwritten copy goes to Trash rather than being destroyed.
They move to Trash, where you can restore them for 10 days (the default) or 30 — your choice in Preferences. After that window they're permanently removed. Files in Trash don't count against your storage.
Every share link can take a password, an expiry date, and a download limit. You can revoke a link at any time, get an email when it's downloaded, and send it by email straight from AvastorX. For a single image, you can also share previews-only: the viewer sees a watermarked preview, and the original can't be downloaded until you send the real link. For a single video, you can share a watermarked copy instead of the master: the link never serves the original, and downloading gives your client the watermarked proof, nothing else.
No. We create a new watermarked copy server-side, burned into every pixel. The original is never served through a proofing link. For video that means a 1080p watermarked cut with your company name or logo burned into every frame; download it and you get the watermarked proof, nothing else. We build the protected copy in the background and the link goes live only once it's ready, so your client never opens a link that isn't live. It's built once per file, so every share after the first is instant. Watermarking is single-file today; there's no gallery watermarking yet.
Yes. Upload a logo in Preferences, with position and opacity control, and it's used on both photos and video. Without a logo, both carry your company name as a text mark.
Watermarking isn't offered for Blackmagic RAW or RED RAW. You can still share those files with password protection and expiring links.
Yes — file requests. Create a public upload link that drops files into a folder you pick; senders don't need an account. Add a password (with a hint for the uploader) and an expiry if you want. Uploads through a request count against your storage.