How much storage is enough?

[Guest]

I was thinking recently that as a kid, 250 GB was plenty of space. I could store plenty of games on the system, and have all my files I needed. Nowadays 1 Terabyte is about standard, however for gamers, often times it's not enough with the game file sizes. 

 

I wondered if maybe there's an unlinked correlation between RAM and storage space. 

When I was younger, 1 Gigabyte was plenty ram, and 250 GB was plenty of storage. 

Now, 2 Terabytes is about right in my opinion for people to have their large amounts of large files, and games. 2 Terabytes is 250 times the needed 8 GB. 

 

Has the optimal amount of storage always been 250 times the amount of RAM? 

Yes, this is person specific, and can never be an exact science. People all have different needs. 

However I'm curious if it's been a common trend for a long time. A large amount of people have 8-16 GB, usually going with 8 to save money. (like budget, or gaming only PCs.)

When I was younger, 1 GB was plenty, however some opted for 2 GB. Later when 500 GB became standard, 2-6gb were the common ground. 

[dogetorhue]

This will vary drastically based on what you're doing with that space. I'm sure that most people don't even use all of their storage.

[Max_Settings]

Nope there is absolutely no correlation between the two. It just depends on the person. For some people, 1Tb is enough, for some not even 4tb is enough.

[Mooshi]

HD media requires more space to hold. More ram is needed for HD content to be created. It's that simple.

[dogetorhue]

I don't think my 32gb of ram matches up with my 1.75tb of storage....

[You_are_a_cunt]

Meanwhile I've pretty much used up 90% of my 8TB storage. WTH is 250gb total storage?

[Guest]

5 hours ago, dogetorhue said:

This will vary drastically based on what you're doing with that space. I'm sure that most people don't even use all of their storage.

5 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

Nope there is absolutely no correlation between the two. It just depends on the person. For some people, 1Tb is enough, for some not even 4tb is enough.

I agree. I thought it would have been a common trend to see the majority of users having 250 times the amount of storage compared to ram. 

5 hours ago, Mooshi said:

HD media requires more space to hold. More ram is needed for HD content to be created. It's that simple.

One of the reasons I thought there to be a potential correlation. If the file sizes are bigger, your memory needs to be higher. 

5 hours ago, revsilverspine said:

Meanwhile I've pretty much used up 90% of my 8TB storage. WTH is 250gb total storage?

kek

[Daniel644]

I've got a 4TB external drive that is nearly full (140ish GB left), a old 1TB mostly full (haven't looked at it in a while) and several other drives with random amounts of data between 60 and 300GB per drive, but I only have 16GB in my desktop and 32GB in my laptop (I got it cheap enough to go all out), I have never looked at a RAM to HDD amount comparison as I always needed tons of storage space for video archiving, for a time I did all my archiving to DVD-R's because cost per gigabyte was far cheaper then HDD's but it's shifted the other way around now, storage needs are ALWAYS growing, RAM needs haven't really changed in the last few years.

 

 

edit: I'm actually debating on getting a 6 or preferably 8TB drive so I can actually backup everything from teh 4TB and have several more years of Archiving capacity or somewhere to actually put ALL my steam games. of which I have only 2 or 3 downloaded (I have like 30) at any given time due to file sizes.

[You_are_a_cunt]

Just now, fpo said:

kek

Hey, I gotta store my research somehow.

I'm at the point where I need to upgrade my second NAS (6TB with off-site backup) or buy larger drives (which, in turn, means I need to upgrade the off-site machine). Projected upgrade costs for Q2 2018 is now sitting at around $3000 T.T

I need to charge more for consultancy services <__<

[Guest]

4 hours ago, revsilverspine said:

Hey, I gotta store my research somehow.

I'm at the point where I need to upgrade my second NAS (6TB with off-site backup) or buy larger drives (which, in turn, means I need to upgrade the off-site machine). Projected upgrade costs for Q2 2018 is now sitting at around $3000 T.T

I need to charge more for consultancy services <__<

I'd pay you for my consulting... but I'm poor and just planned a 1k dollar build. 

[Droidbot]

my dad has 10tb onsite, and 1tb cloud (IT'S JUST SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER, THAT'S ALL THE FUCKING CLOUD IS!)

 

I have 1tb in my machine and 2tb in local server. 

[You_are_a_cunt]

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

my dad has 10tb onsite, and 1tb cloud (IT'S JUST SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER, THAT'S ALL THE FUCKING CLOUD IS!)

 

I have 1tb in my machine and 2tb in local server. 

lmao 1tb cloud.

 

I don't know how/why/when I managed to amass my storage space. I keep getting slightly older drives that people don't care for and I shove them into my machines until they die

[Tsuki]

how much is enough depends on how much you need.

i am a gamer, and i run a plex server off my computer.  i need about 4TB

[Droidbot]

8 minutes ago, revsilverspine said:

lmao 1tb cloud.

 

I don't know how/why/when I managed to amass my storage space. I keep getting slightly older drives that people don't care for and I shove them into my machines until they die

that's essentially my server

 

250GB + 160GB + 320GB + 750GB + 320GB 

[You_are_a_cunt]

2 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

that's essentially my server

 

250GB + 160GB + 320GB + 750GB + 320GB 

Heh. Mine go as low as 120 (essentially 110) and as high as 2 TB (I dunno how the 2TB drives happened, though. I might have pulled them from a FUBAR'd system)

[Droidbot]

Just now, revsilverspine said:

Heh. Mine go as low as 120 (essentially 110) and as high as 2 TB (I dunno how the 2TB drives happened, though. I might have pulled them from a FUBAR'd system)

the 750GB is from my old laptop, I replaced it with a 500GB. 

 

I actually have a 1TB from my mum's laptop in my current laptop, cloned it to a BRAND NEW 500GB drive and her laptop is so much faster and I get fucktons of secondary storage

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Droidbot said:

snip

My friend's home server is believe it or not... In his kitchen. He claims there to be a giant box just kinda there, and it's 10 TB of storage holding all their important data. (It may be hiding in plain sight, but without seeing it I already know how valuable it is, and where it is lol.)

4 hours ago, revsilverspine said:

I don't know how/why/when I managed to amass my storage space. I keep getting slightly older drives that people don't care for and I shove them into my machines until they die

Must be part of your inconsistent rates.  "That'll be 20 dollars, and a used SSD."

4 hours ago, Tsuki said:

how much is enough depends on how much you need.

i am a gamer, and i run a plex server off my computer.  i need about 4TB

Do you have 16 GB of ram? If so, your ram to storage ratio matches up to my theory. 

 

EDIT:

my most recent PC that I disassembled had 12 GB of ram. Though I had OVER 5 TB I only used 700~ GB.

[You_are_a_cunt]

9 minutes ago, fpo said:

 

Must be part of your inconsistent rates.  "That'll be 20 dollars, and a used SSD."

 

Nah. Most likely it's from people dumping their old/broken PCs and laptops in my workshop.

I diagnose what's left of them, keep what's good or usable and take everything else to recycling. That's probably why I have a pile of old CPUs

[Tsuki]

16 hours ago, fpo said:

Do you have 16 GB of ram? If so, your ram to storage ratio matches up to my theory. 

currently running 24GB ram, and while i need 4TB of hdd space, ive only actually got 2TB. im constantly uninstalling games and deleting movies to make space for new ones.

There goes your theory lol

[skywake]

From memory of past PCs I've had have had anywhere from 10x to 200x more storage than RAM. I don't think there's much of a correlation between the two other than the fact that both have been steadily increasing in capacity. And either way it wasn't that long ago when both RAM and storage were serious limitations. You could never have enough and archiving stuff to optical media was basically a requirement. These days I have more RAM than I ever really use, most of my drives are only ~50% full and I don't think I've deleted anything in years

[Jarsky]

My main use computers I can recall were:

 

8MB Ram :  50MB Storage

16MB Ram: 500MB Storage

128MB Ram : 20GB Storage

256MB Ram : 160GB Storage

1GB Ram : 560GB Storage

2GB Ram : 320GB Storage

4GB Ram : 2.3TB Storage

16GB Ram : 2.5TB Storage

32GB Ram : 4.25TB Storage

 

 

This doesn't include my Storage Servers / NAS Storage. But the ratios vary drastically. There really is no corrolation between the 2, until you're taking into consideration pagefiles, but otherwise theyre competely different uses -but of course both will increase over time just like CPU IPC.