disksHow much storage do you actually need?
It's tempting to buy the biggest drive you can afford, but the right size depends on what you store and how fast it grows.
Rough guide by use
- Office & web, light use: 250–500 GB SSD is plenty for the OS and apps.
- Gaming: 1–2 TB — modern titles can exceed 100 GB each. An NVMe SSD keeps load times short.
- Photography & video: 4 TB and up; RAW and 4K footage fill space fast.
- Media server / backups: 8 TB+, ideally in a NAS — see our NAS guide.
Buy for growth
Storage needs tend to roughly double every couple of years. Because price per terabyte usually improves with capacity, buying one size up is often cheaper per terabyte and saves you upgrading sooner. Compare tiers on our 2TB, 4TB and 8TB pages.
Split fast and bulk storage
A common setup pairs a smaller, fast SSD for the operating system and active files with a large, cheap HDD for everything else. You get SSD responsiveness where it counts and HDD value where you just need space.