Quoting from a forum thread:

https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=59896&...

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?

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Here is an answer from Amazon support, April 2011:

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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,

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I've played around with some of the datasets and it ended up being fairly costly....