Actually… you almost definitely are. There’s almost a hoarder’s instinct with S3 and related cloud storage. You keep things in there that you might not need any more, because it can be hard to identify what’s needed. However that’s not what I’m talking about

I’m talking about Aborted multipart uploads.

S3 includes options for multipart uploads on large files. This makes uploads more reliable, by breaking them up into smaller chunks, and makes them resumable, by starting again from a failed chunk. A lot of S3 clients have multipart built-in, so you might well be doing a multipart upload without even knowing it.

However when a multipart upload aborts and does not complete, the slot can be held open – there is literally no timeout – and it’s an object in your account, for which you’ll be charged.

Luckily, AWS provide ways to deal with this. You just have to search them out

If you’re using PowerShell, as I am, you can use the Remove-S3MultipartUploads cmdlet. If you’re using, say, node.js, you can use s3-upload-cleaner. There’s a way to clean these up in your chosen SDK, you just need to know about it and act on it.

There’s even a way to do this with an S3 bucket lifecycle policy, as explained by Jeff Barr here.

Now go forth, and stop paying too much for S3. Also, clean out the attic while you’re in there. You don’t need most of those files, do you? Hoarder.