When purchasing a new computer, it’s hard to determine how much hard drive space you need. Every computer has a set amount of space, such as “500GB,” but how big is that?
What can you store on a 500GB hard drive? Will it allow you to install as much software and download as much media as you want? Is it too small? Given that there’s no physical reference to just how big 500GB is, it can be hard to visualize its size. This guide helps you determine how much hard drive space you need.
Tip: if replacing your hard drive, you may want to upgrade to a solid-state drive.
What Goes on a Hard Drive?
Your computer’s hard drive is where all your data is stored. Everything goes on your hard drive, from your operating system, work documents, music, and photos, to bigger files, like games, movies, and TV series. It also stores your settings preferences, peripheral drivers, and anything else required to make your computer work.
SSD or HDD?
Whether you should get an SSD or an older-style HDD (Hard Disk Drive) may sound like a separate topic, but it’s inextricably tied to your storage capacity. Even a SATA SSD is leaps and bounds ahead of a conventional HDD regarding read-and-write speeds and system responsiveness. You can get a 1TB SATA SSD for only 20 percent more than it costs to buy a 1TB HDD.
For a slight premium, solid-state drives offer significantly faster read-and-write speeds that are vital to demanding tasks like gaming, video editing, and more. Even boot time and file transfer time can benefit a great deal from migrating from a hard disk drive to a solid-state drive. You’ll need to consider whether the trade-off of speed for capacity is worth it.
Below is our general rundown of what is best stored on what kind of drive, which will help you decide on the capacity and type of drive you need.
- SSD: operating system, demanding games, video editing, Photoshop, and other demanding software
- HDD: documents, movies, music, photos, lightweight games, and software.
Also helpful: If you are having issues with your current hard drive, you can try defragging your Windows drive.
How Much Space Do I Need?
Let’s break down the most common use cases into light, medium, and heavy storage usage. For each, we are listing the everyday activity included in that type of usage. We also take a look at just how big a hard drive you need for each one.
Light Usage
Light Use Describes You If You Are:
- Work user
- Maintain a home office
- HTPC (home theater PC) user
How Much Hard Drive Space You Need: 250GB to 500GB
You may find yourself on this tier if you’re using your computer purely as a work device. Word documents, PowerPoint decks, and Excel spreadsheets don’t take up much space: a couple of kilobytes (KB) each if you’re storing raw data or a few megabytes (MB) if you’ve added pictures to it. You can even store music files, photos, and videos on a small- to medium-capacity drive. You don’t have much to fear, given that hard drives come with gigabytes (GB) in the hundreds!
No matter how many you use daily in this category, purchasing on the low end of the scale of hard drives should be plenty. Computers that sport a hard drive of around 250 to 500GB of space should work for you, and you even have the world of cloud-based storage to explore, such as Google Drive or Dropbox.
Tip: expand your PC storage before deleting anything off your hard drive.
Medium Usage
Medium Use Describes You If You Are:
- Occasional gamer
- Movie buff
- Photography enthusiast
How Much Hard Drive Space You Need: 500GB to 1TB
This tier includes usage from storing high-resolution photos and videos to archives of lossless music and HD movies and TV series. It can also include a few games if you’re okay with uninstalling titles once you’ve completed them. If you identify with many of the above use cases, you may need to spend a bit more and purchase a higher-capacity drive that can last you a few years.
If you’re an avid gamer and movie watcher, however, you’ll probably make light work of 500GB and want to look for something around the 1 TB mark instead. You can easily find 1TB NVMe SSDs starting from around $35.
Also helpful: you can back up Google Photos to your hard drive if you have enough space.
Heavy Usage
Heavy Use Describes You If You Are:
- Heavy gamer
- Have extensive archives of movies, TV series, and photos
How Much Hard Drive Space You Need: 2TB to 4TB
This tier is for those who enjoy downloading and playing multiple modern games and don’t want to repeatedly delete older titles to make space for the new ones. It’s also for those who wish to maintain a huge library of 4K movies and TV series on their computer. As high-end modern games can very easily breach even 150GB, and a 4K movie can exceed 30GB to 40GB, you’ll need to equip your computer with serious storage to be prepared.
You can get away with 2TB if you’re only into gaming and HD or 4K movies. If you’re also a content creator who needs to store multiple RAW files, you’ll want to get a minimum of 4TB storage on your PC, or you may feel the squeeze quite quickly!
Moreover, if you’re also storing all of your photos and videos from your smartphone on your computer, you’ll need to consider those size requirements as well.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SSD better than HDD for daily use?
Although SSDs have become drastically cheaper in just the past few years, choosing between an SSD and HDD will depend on your specific use case. SSDs offer responsiveness in another league, but SSDs with 2TB storage and higher are still expensive. An ideal solution is to have a combination of a fast and slightly costlier SSD for your OS and most important files and a slower but cheaper HDD for storing files that are less frequently accessed.
How many GB of storage should I leave free?
For a traditional hard disk drive, leaving around 15 to 20 percent free is recommended to allow Windows to defragment and store temporary files and backups. For SSDs, defragmentation is not a thing anymore. Still, to allow for optimal performance, especially on SSDs without a DRAM buffer, leaving around 10 to 20 percent free is recommended.
How much space is enough for Windows?
For your operating system, whether it’s Windows 10 or Windows 11, it’s recommended to have a partition size of at least 150GB. This allows enough space for Windows system files, your installed programs, and the hibernation file.
How much hard drive space does a laptop need?
The capacity of the hard drive on your laptop depends on your requirements. A 1TB hard drive should be enough for most users – unless you want to store multiple large games and huge media archives. But one thing to remember with laptops is the physical storage limitations. Unlike desktops, where you can add hard drives and SSDs as long as you have enough ports on your motherboard, laptops are different. Many laptops have a single hard drive that you can’t replace. Even in models where adding and replacing drives is possible, you can, at best, keep two drives simultaneously. It’s essential to assess your storage requirements carefully before choosing your laptop configuration.
Image credit: Unsplash
Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox
