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Looking for a new laptop? You may ask, “How much storage space do I need?” There are a lot of things to consider and look at when looking for a new laptop. Should you buy a laptop with 1TB of memory? How much is 1TB actually? Is it too much or too little?
How much space actually depends on what you are using it for. For most people, less than 256GB of disk space will suffice; for gaming or photo/video editing, 1TB plus is preferable.
Basic documents and a few family photos don’t take up as much space, while games can take up several gigabytes of space.
How much storage space do you need on your laptop?
Children’s Laptop: 128-256 GB
As the number of interactive learning activities grows every day, children’s laptops are becoming more popular with young families. Most of the time, however, these laptops don’t require a lot of space, as your kids most likely won’t need programs like Microsoft Office, and they won’t waste their time creating large documents.
A laptop with enough space for a few tutorials will be plenty of room for little kids who will probably spend most of their time watching videos anyway. 256 GB or even 128 GB will be enough for a kid’s laptop.
Student Laptop: 256-512 GB
The amount of storage space a student needs usually depends on the type of training he is doing. High school students usually do not need a lot of space for school activities, as they will be working with small files and programs. 256GB to 512GB will probably be enough to keep a high school student going.
College laptops will require more or less space depending on which major the student chooses. Specialties that deal with small file sizes, mainly for essays and assignments, will be fine from 256 GB to 512 GB, but for large companies such as art/media, computer science, engineering, etc., more space from -for the large file sizes and the number of programs required to do their job.
Family / Personal Laptop: 512GB – 1TB
Families with a shared laptop may find slightly more storage space helpful. If you plan on saving all of your family photos on this laptop, as well as letting the kids do their homework and save files on it, you will likely find that space is being used up pretty quickly.
Depending on the amount of work your family plans to do on a laptop, a 512GB to 1TB hard drive may be more suitable.
Business Laptop: 512GB – 1TB
Business laptops, like student laptops, will require as much space as your work. Therefore, if your business requires access to huge spreadsheets to edit them and use several specialized programs for work, a laptop with a larger memory capacity may be more useful. If you have a choice, go for a laptop with a larger capacity from 512GB to 1TB.
Gaming Laptop: 1 TB
Gaming laptops should have plenty of room. Period. Even if you only play small games, you will need more storage, at least 1TB or more. If you are an avid gamer and want to stay on top of today’s best AAA games, over 1TB of storage is your best bet.
The best way to determine the amount of space you need as a gamer is to simply look at the games you play or want to play and see how much storage space they require. Large games can be anywhere from 50GB to 75GB, and larger games hit the market each year.
Video / Photo Editing Laptop: 2TB to 4TB
Editing videos and photos will require more storage space than a typical personal laptop. Videos and photos can take up storage space very quickly. Just think about how often you need to browse your phone to delete all those selfies in order to free up space.
If you are into video / photo editing game, you need to have a lot of space not only for your photos and videos, but also for the programs with which you plan to edit them. Photoshop alone requires 3.1 GB of program-only space. If you use many other photo editing programs on your laptop, you will need quite a lot of space just for them. Long videos themselves can take up several gigabytes of space, so it’s in your best interest to have a laptop with storage capacity to keep you going.
Photo/video editing laptops must be 2TB or more, with most photographers offering at least 4TB.
Conclusion:
The amount of disk space you need depends entirely on what you plan to use your laptop for. If you are a student who loves to play in your spare time, a laptop with more than 1TB of memory is best for you. On the other hand, if you plan to use the laptop only for storing family photos and a few documents, 256GB of storage will suffice.
It is important that your laptop has enough space to use it. While more space often means a laptop is a little more expensive, that extra space can help you in the long run if you use it up quickly. You don’t have to mess with external hard drives and store files in different places if you think ahead about how much space you need.
