If you’ve ever stood frozen in front of a cloud dashboard, wondering “Do I need S3, EBS, or EFS?”—
You’re not alone.
I was the same.
Picking storage types felt like a weird guessing game, and half the time I chose wrong.
Not because I was lazy—but because no one ever explained this stuff in plain English.
Once I finally understood how object, block, and file storage actually work, everything changed.
I stopped guessing.
I started designing smarter architectures.
And I finally felt like I knew what the heck I was doing.
So here’s the breakdown I wish someone had handed me.
📦 File Storage: The “Old-School Shared Drive” You Already Know
Let’s start easy.
File storage is like your Google Drive or company shared folder. It organizes data in a hierarchical folder structure (think: /documents/reports/2023), and you access files by path and name.
✅ It’s great for:
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Shared drives
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Network-attached storage (NAS)
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Apps that expect a traditional file system
🛑 But it’s not ideal for high-performance or massive scaling.
Think of it like a filing cabinet—it’s intuitive, but clunky if you try to scale it to millions of people.
☁️ On AWS? That’s EFS (Elastic File System).
On Azure? Azure Files.
🧱 Block Storage: The “Lego Bricks” of Storage
Block storage splits your data into fixed-sized chunks (blocks) and gives each one a unique ID.
It’s like working with raw hard drive space.
This is the stuff operating systems love—you can format it however you want, install a file system, and use it like a traditional disk.
✅ Perfect for:
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Databases
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Virtual machines (like EC2)
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Apps needing low latency and high performance
🛠️ It’s not human-friendly though.
You don’t just "open a file"—your OS handles that. It’s a deeper, behind-the-scenes type of storage.
☁️ On AWS? Think EBS (Elastic Block Store).
On Azure? Managed Disks.
🪣 Object Storage: The “Everything Bucket” That Scales Like Crazy
Object storage is a completely different beast.
There are no folders, no file paths—just objects stored in buckets, each with metadata and a unique key.
Think of it like uploading a photo to Instagram.
You don’t care where it lives on disk—you just want to retrieve it when needed. That’s object storage.
✅ Ideal for:
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Static websites
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Images, videos, backups
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Big data lakes
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Anything you want to access over HTTP
🧠 Here’s the magic: It’s infinitely scalable, cheap, and globally accessible.
☁️ On AWS? You already know: S3.
Azure? Blob Storage.
⚔️ When I Finally “Got It” (and Stopped Guessing)
I used to throw everything into S3 because “everyone uses it.”
Wrong move.
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I stored database files in S3 (slow + clunky)
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I used EBS for shared app configs (headache)
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I avoided EFS because I didn’t understand it
Once I took a step back and understood the design trade-offs, everything became clearer:
“Am I storing structured data that needs fast reads and writes?”
→ Block.
“Do I need shared access and a familiar folder system?”
→ File.
“Is this data mostly static, needs to scale, and accessed via the web?”
→ Object.
That mental model changed the way I build cloud environments.
🧩 TL;DR: Storage Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
Let’s recap this, plain and simple:
| Storage Type | Think Of It Like… | Best For | Cloud Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| File | Shared drive | Shared folders, lift-and-shift apps | AWS EFS, Azure Files |
| Block | Raw hard disk | Databases, VMs, performance-heavy apps | AWS EBS, Azure Disks |
| Object | Bucket in the cloud | Static files, images, big data | AWS S3, Azure Blob |
🚀 My Advice If You're Just Starting Out
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Don’t blindly follow tutorials—question why they use a specific storage type.
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Practice building all three: spin up an EC2 instance, mount EBS, upload to S3, and set up EFS.
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Draw the architecture before deploying. Ask: “What kind of storage actually makes sense here?”
🤯 Final Thoughts
Cloud platforms don’t just throw all these options at you to confuse you.
They offer them because each has a purpose.
And once you stop guessing and start choosing storage types intentionally,
you go from being a builder to being a designer.
And trust me—that shift is powerful.
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