Should I buy more storage than I need right now?

Yes, within reason. Storage use always grows, and bigger drives have a better price per TB. Buying one size up is usually cheaper than upgrading again later, so a little headroom pays off.

Is it cheaper to buy one big drive or several small ones?

One big drive almost always wins on price per TB, because the fixed costs are spread across more storage. Buy big for value, but keep redundancy in mind for anything important.

How Much Storage Do You Actually Need?

Q: How much storage do I actually need?

It depends entirely on what you store. A gaming PC is comfortable on 2TB, a photo and document hoard on 4 to 8TB, and a serious media or backup library on 20TB and up. Buy a bit more than today's need, because storage use only grows.

Published: 6 juillet 2026

Live answer · Amazon.com

Pulling live prices…

Live data across PricePerGig listings. Prices may change; Updated every few hours.

📊 Au 8 juillet 2026, le HDD typique sur Amazon.fr est à 164 €/TB ou 0,164 €/GB sur les 2,858 offres en direct que nous suivons, avec le plus grand choix de disques autour de 48,7 €/TB ou 0,049 €/GB. Les meilleures offres sur Amazon.fr démarrent autour de 288 € pour 8TB (36 €/TB), 453 € pour 14TB (32,3 €/TB) et 550 € pour 20TB (27,5 €/TB). Le meilleur rapport qualité-prix actuel est 18TB à environ 23,8 € le TB.

Sourced from real discussions on r/DataHoarder and r/buildapc, cross-checked against live PricePerGig listings.

The eternal buying question. How much storage do I actually need?

Here is the honest answer nobody likes: a bit more than you think.

Storage use only ever goes one direction, and that is up. So the goal is to buy enough headroom that you are not upgrading again in six months.

The table above shows live price per TB on your marketplace, because the smart move is to buy big once rather than small twice.

A rough guide by what you do

Let me give you real numbers to anchor on, not vague waffle.

Everyday laptop, browsing and documents: 500GB to 1TB is plenty.
Gaming PC: 2TB is the comfortable sweet spot, more if you keep a big library installed.
Photos and personal files hoard: 4TB to 8TB covers most people for years.
Serious media library or full backups: 20TB and up, and it will still fill.

Find your row, then add a chunk on top. You will use it.

Why you should buy bigger than today’s need

This is the bit that saves you money long term.

A drive that is bang on your current size today is full and annoying within a year.

Buying one size up costs surprisingly little extra, because bigger drives have a better price per TB. Meanwhile, upgrading later means buying a whole new drive and shuffling data around.

Headroom is cheaper than a do over. Glance at the live table and you will see the bigger capacity is barely more per terabyte.

One big drive or several small ones?

Short version: one big drive wins on value almost every time.

The fixed costs of a drive, the motor, the casing, the controller, get spread across more storage on a big drive. So the price per TB drops as capacity climbs.

The only reason to spread across several drives is redundancy, not value. And redundancy is about protecting data, not saving money.

So buy big for value, then add a second drive for safety if the data matters.

Do not forget the backup tax

Here is the number people forget to budget for.

If your data matters, you need more than one copy. That means your real storage need is roughly double the raw amount, because a backup is a second copy.

Want 8TB of irreplaceable files? Budget for 16TB of drives so you can keep a backup.

It feels like a lot until the day a drive dies and you are very glad you did.

The bottom line

How much storage you need comes down to your use case plus headroom plus a backup copy.

Pick the rough figure for what you do, round up because usage grows, buy big for the best price per TB using the live table above, and double it if the data is irreplaceable. Do that and you buy the right amount once, instead of upgrading again and again and waisting money each time.

A rough guide by what you do

Why you should buy bigger than today’s need

One big drive or several small ones?

Do not forget the backup tax

The bottom line

Related questions