Computer storage

[vinaya]

What is the storage capacity of your computer? My has limitation of 240 GB storage. If I have to store ebooks, music, photo and videos, my computer always falls short to store data and gives me a headache to store on SSD. However, if I don't use much multimedia data, 240 GB is more than enough

 

[IcyBC]

I don't think I have nearly as much storage space as your! However, I don't store videos or music or ebooks on my computer. I have an external hard drive that I stores all my photos, and articles.

 

[IBMPC8088]

The reported amount is always going to be less than what it says on the box (and even what is reported by the physical medium), because every file and directory (folder) you have on a hard drive takes up space to be represented on the file system.

Also, on magnetic drives, it's going to be less than that too, because while an SSD is entirely digital and can report to the nearest Gigabyte accurately (even though the filesystem and other data accounts for a smaller space being available), you're going to only have 1000 bytes per unit available when calculating storage rather than 1024 bytes per unit.

The exact amount that is correct is 1k or 1,024 but because of the physical restraints, it's only going to be 1,000 on the physical part of the drive. This is why you'll get, for example, an external drive that says it has 4TB capacity, but when calculated out and looking at the real available space on the drive, it is only like 3.7TB or 3.8TB depending on the type of file system you use, and any other overhead.

If you know how many files per directory you want available on the file system and other factors, you can sometimes adjust how many K per sector there are. Originally with the older drives, it was about 512k per sector, but since then 2k and 4k (Advanced Format or AF) have become more of the mainstay. You can tailor NTFS, ExFat, EXT, or JFS on linux and other OSes to where you can maximize and get the most space out of it possible for what you're using it for.

It won't always be that much, but if you really need the extra few Megabytes or Gigabytes, it can matter.

 

[Vash]

My last laptop, a Dell Vostro 1500 came with 160GB HDD in 2008 when I purchased it. I upgraded it to a 128GB SSD in 2011. Then upgraded it again to a 512GB SSD in fall 2015 but the laptop died shortly after.

Then I bought my current Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with 256GB SSD. Such capacity is only good for install programs and small files. That's what external hard drives are for. I had three external hard drive, one of them was converted from the 512GB SSD I bought earlier.

The computer's internal storage does not need to hold all your files and it is actually a bad idea to do so since it is more troublesome to retrieve the files if your computer dies. It is an easier and more secure way to store large files on external hard drive... with multiple copies too.

 

[IcyBC]

The computer's internal storage does not need to hold all your files and it is actually a bad idea to do so since it is more troublesome to retrieve the files if your computer dies. It is an easier and more secure way to store large files on external hard drive... with multiple copies too.

I agree! The more you store on your hard drive, the more bog down it will get with time; and if something happens, there goes all your data. It is better to keep things separate or using the external hard drive to store than have them all on the computer.

 

[Vash]

Yep, with desktop PC, you can have multiple hard drives inside the tower case. So you can have a primary hard drive and multiple storage devices inside a single computer. For a laptop, it is not an option in most cases. And we need the laptop to be as light as possible for the portability. So the primary hard drive in the laptop is usually not used for storage. It is for running OS and programs mostly. Leave the storage duty to the external hard drives.

 

[acerme2]

My laptop has 500 GB storage. I haven't used a third of its total capacity because I don't install that many applications or games. I would have been content with 250 GB because I hardly download files. I use it to save personal files like pictures, videos, and my work documents and I keep a back up on my external storage.

 

[SirJoe]

My laptop came with a 500GB drive which I split in half for windows and Linux. I also have an external drive but it's not to big. Since I don't keep a lot of multimedia files it is just enough, but I am thinking of upgrading my drive to SSD and using this existing drive as an external.

 

[Corzhens]

My laptop has 500 GB storage. I haven't used a third of its total capacity because I don't install that many applications or games. I would have been content with 250 GB because I hardly download files. I use it to save personal files like pictures, videos, and my work documents and I keep a back up on my external storage.

Same here, we have 500 GB which is more than enough in my laptop but in our home computer where we store pictures and videos, even 1 TB is not enough for storage so we are planning to buy 2 TB for the archiving. I don't think our home desktop can handle a 1 TB HDD so we can let it stay with the 2 units of 500 GB which seems to be the maximum storage our 7-year old computer at home can handle.

 

[Aree Wongwanlee]

I have 500Gb of hard drive space, split into 3 partitions. One is for Windows, another is for the Lenovo software which came with the laptop. The third is all mine. I have still got quite a bit of space left. Recently, I got a disk full error message. I checked and found that I had a bunch of big games which I didn't play anymore. So I just deleted them. Now I have quite a lot of free space.

 

[AntonioCalcano]

The standard amount right now for most computers is 1TB, it's more than enough for most people. 1TB is plenty of space for storing almost anything, and right now you have the cloud which will help you store even more. The ideal size for the HDD of a computer is related to the needs of the user.