Quoting from a forum thread: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=59896&tstart=0 https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=59896&#38...

Quoting from a forum thread: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=59896&tstart=0 https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=59896&#38... So as I understand it in order to be able to access a public dataset I create a new EBS volume and attach it to a given instance for use. So if a dataset were 200GB in size I'd be charged against my storage usage for 200GB / month. Is this correct? Is there a way to do a read-only access to the data from within an instance that doesn't count against my storage usage? ------------------------------------------------------------ Here is an answer from Amazon support, April 2011: ------------------------------------------------------------ Hello, You are correct, in order to use a public data set you will have to create an EBS volume with the corresponding snapshot and attach it to an instance. There is currently no option for read-only access. Sincerely, ------------------------------------------------------------ I've played around with some of the datasets and it ended up being fairly costly....