How Much Storage Do I Need? Phone, Laptop & Cloud Sizing

Size by content, not by habit

Photos: 12 MP HEIC ~1.8 MB · camera JPEG 4–15 MB · RAW 30–55 MB
Video: 1 hour of 1080p ≈ 2.3 GB · 1 hour of 4K30 ≈ 11.3 GB
Music: 1,000 songs ≈ 3.4–8 GB depending on bitrate
Games: 50–150 GB each today, before updates and shader caches
Documents and code: rarely above 20 GB for years of work

Device recommendations

Phone: 128 GB for photos and apps; 256 GB if you shoot 4K video; 512 GB only for heavy videography.
Laptop: 512 GB is the comfortable floor; add an external drive rather than paying the 1 TB upgrade if the work is not local.
Desktop: 1 TB NVMe for system and projects, plus a separate drive or NAS for archives.
Camera cards: two 128 GB cards beat one 256 GB card — redundancy is worth more than convenience.
Cloud: one tier above your current usage; growth of 10–20% a year is normal.

The 10% rule for SSDs

Flash storage rewrites data in blocks and needs free space for wear management and garbage collection. Past roughly 85–90% full, write performance falls, endurance drops and some firmware slows more aggressively. On a 512 GB SSD, plan to keep about 50 GB free — which in practice means buying one size larger than your data strictly requires.

Planning for three years

Take today's usage, add last year's growth once more, apply the 10% rule, then round up to the next standard size. A 320 GB library growing 60 GB a year reaches 440 GB in two years and needs about 490 GB with headroom — so a 512 GB drive, not the 256 GB that “fits” today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 256 GB enough for a laptop?

For documents, code and streaming, yes. For photo libraries, video projects or games, use 512 GB plus external storage.

Is 128 GB enough for a phone?

With cloud photo offloading and no 4K video habit, yes. Otherwise 256 GB prevents monthly housekeeping.

How much storage for a photographer?

Budget 250–500 GB per year of active shooting in JPEG, or double that in RAW, plus working and backup copies — most photographers settle on 4 TB archival drives.

Should I buy external storage instead of a bigger laptop?

If the work is not portable-critical, yes — external SSDs cost far less per terabyte than manufacturer upgrades.