Cloud accounts · Amazon S3

What are the most common mistakes when setting up Amazon S3?

Short answer: The usual mistakes: an Availability Zone ID as the region, an S3 Express bucket, no bucket set, expecting a restricted user to list all buckets, and a wrong or leaked secret. Storage Studio flags the first three for you.

The usual five are: an Availability Zone ID in the Region field, an S3 Express bucket, no bucket set, expecting a restricted user to list all buckets, and a secret key that's leaked or mistyped. Storage Studio catches the first three for you.

  • Region — use a region like us-east-1, not a zone ID like use1-az1. Storage Studio offers a one-click fix.
  • Express bucket — names ending in --x-s3 are refused; use a standard bucket.
  • No bucket — a banner says "Bucket not set — transfers will fail" with Edit bucket….
  • "Access Denied" listing buckets — normal for a least-privilege user.
  • Wrong or leaked secret — create a new key in AWS and update it with Edit.

Amazon's own error messages can be misleading, so check this list before anything else.

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