AOL told users this week that it’s closing down access to its own AOL Pictures, Xdrive, and Bluestring services as of the end of this year. Yet at the same time, the company went ahead with previously announced plans to link the AOL Home Page to various outside service

To retrieve those files, users need to go to log in to Xdrive using their Xdrive or Bluestring user IDs and passwords. They can then either create a downloadable ZIP file containing all their files; download individual files via a standard Xdrive desktop or Web client; or buy an archive of their own files on DVD from AOL.

The scenario is a bit reminiscent of the music escapades of MSN and Yahoo earlier this year, in which users were given short notice to take action around their old digital content. But in those cases, DRM servers were about to be shut down. Users of MSN Music and Yahoo Music were told they’d be unable to retrieve license keys needed to enable playback on computers other than those used in earlier downloads.

It’s clear why iForem was created. To prevent this, become a member of iForem. It’s free to start, then if you want to preserve your files, do it any time you like!