How Much Laptop Storage Do You Need

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When looking to buy a laptop, one of the main things you have to decide is how much storage you need. That’s a challenging question for many of us to answer. Let’s discuss the factors that matter and how to decide.

The short answer, for many people, is that you don’t need much laptop storage. Having 512 GB available is often enough for a regular user, but it’s going to depend on how you’re using the laptop.

For example, if you use cloud email, your account likely comes with cloud storage. Using cloud-based applications such as Google Docs also saves storage space.

If you’re using the laptop to stream videos on TikTok or YouTube, or watching your series or movies on Netflix or the like, you’re also taking advantage of the cloud. Very little data is actually stored on your computer.

Even so, remember to account also for your operating system. Microsoft and Apple recommend 32 GB of storage space to accommodate their OSs. Otherwise, you could encounter performance issues.

Also, if you edit videos or work in graphic design, you’ll likely want a lot more available storage.

How storage space impacts your computer use

Storage space is the capacity your computer uses to store files and data. So, when you have a lot of data, images, or video to hold and work with, more storage helps the PC recall them more quickly.

If you are a digital hoarder, that can also factor into your storage needs.

When thinking about storing photos, you’d have to have many albums to make a dent. If the average image size is about 4 MB, it would take 1000 photos to use up 4 GBs of space. But video eats up a lot more space. An hour-long 1080 p video could occupy 10,000 MB (10 GB).

If you regularly download new apps and games, you can quickly fill up your storage space. Purging unused files and apps consistently frees up space.

Considering the cost of laptop storage

More storage can mean a bigger price tag, so you’ll want to balance your storage needs against your budget constraints.

If you can spend freely, go ahead and get more storage. Otherwise, you’ll want to weigh hard disk drive (HDD) and solid-state drive (SSD) upgrades.

HDDs offer more storage for less cost, but slower reading and writing. SSDs can be three to four times as expensive, but you do get greater speed. SSDs are also typically quieter, more durable, and consume less energy.

One option is to buy a laptop with a smaller SSD and get an external HDD to meet both your speed and storage needs. HDDs can be better for data recovery and for storing large amounts of data you’re not accessing often.

Need help making decisions about your laptop purchase or storage needs? Our IT experts have the answers you need. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Facebook is for Sharing, Not Storing

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When was the last time you held an actual photo album or actual prints of photographs in your hands? Maybe you look back at older photographs only when Facebook’s TimeHop app reminds you of a pic from five years ago. If so, you may be risking your visual history.

Facebook is a great way to share photos with friends and family around the world. You get to enjoy their comments and the affirmation of their likes. But using Facebook as storage for your photos is not a good plan. Here’s why.

Some people treat Facebook as their photo album archive. They delete the originals from their devices or digital camera when they need more space. But Facebook compresses images for faster download. It satisfies impatient social media users, which means photo quality suffers. If you wanted to print those photos in the future, they wouldn’t look as good as the originals.

That’s not the only drawback. When you trust Facebook with all your photos, you’re letting a company control your visual archive. It’s hard to imagine, given Facebook’s reach today, but what happens to your photos if the company goes defunct? We don’t know. The people who were keeping their photos on Myspace in 2006 might have an idea.

The younger crowd is already moving onto other social platforms. Plus, Facebook’s growth rate in North America and Europe is slowing. Those daily active users are the primary source of revenue. So, you know Mark Zuckerberg is in some meetings about that.

Even if Facebook continues as the business behemoth it is today, we don’t know what policy changes it might make. It could change its terms of service whenever it wanted (if you even read those in the first place). Users have no guarantee for how long Facebook will store their images or any type of content.

Keep in mind also that many of the photos showing up in your timeline are actually taken by friends. Facebook provides an entire album of other people’s photos when they’ve tagged you, but if they decided to untag you or remove it, that photo would be gone.

Finally, there’s also the risk of your account getting shut down or hacked. You’ve probably had friends warn you not to accept any new friend requests from them because they’ve been compromised. You wouldn’t want a thief to steal all your photo albums. Similarly, you don’t want a cybercriminal to gain access to all your images.

Our Recommendation

Just as with data, we recommend you have a “3-2-1” backup system for your digital photographs. This means having three copies of the photos you care about. You don’t need to back up the blurry ones if you don’t want to.

You might keep one copy on the original device, but you’d have two other copies of the high-quality, uncompressed, original image as well. One might be kept on an external storage device such as a USB thumb drive, and the other you could upload to cloud storage.

The cloud backup gives you access to the photos from any device in any location. So, if a flood, hurricane, or fire devastates your home, and you lose your device and the USB thumb drive, you still have a backup. Your Facebook photos and videos are just there to be shared with friends and family.

Not sure where or how to safely store your photos and videos? We can help! Our experts may even become new Facebook friends. Then we can all like each other’s photos with the peace of mind that the original photos aren’t going anywhere.

Streamline Digital Media Storage with NAS

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Many businesses rely on digital media (photographers, designers, and real estate agents come to mind). Needing photos and videos leads to the headache of handling portable storage devices. A nice solution is network-attached storage (NAS).

So, why is it good for a business to go the NAS route? Network-attached storage gives all networked computers access to storage in one centralized location.

The Current Situation

Many creative occupations require working with large file sizes. Storing a large, unedited video file or photoshoot files in one place is challenging. A typical MacBook offers only 256 GB of storage (and one project can take up 50 GB), so files go on portable storage.

In some studios, all you see is stacks of external storage drives and thumb drives or SD cards lying about. Tracking down a previous project or design involves sorting through many storage options. It’s annoying and time consuming.

Relying on external storage is also risky. These devices are prone to failure if the plug-in mechanism is damaged or the device is dropped. External hard drives can also get damaged by static electricity, overheating, or water. They’re easy to lose, too!

A Better Solution

Think of NAS as a small, low-powered computer you attach to your network. The NAS will live on your network with its own Internet Protocol address. It can handle audio, video, websites, text files, documents, and unstructured data.

Since it’s meant for storage and file serving, the NAS is a high-performing storage solution. Users can access the files they need via a standard wired or wireless connection, or from remote locations, as the NAS remains switched on. At the same time, the NAS can handle the demands of more than one user simultaneously. In an ad agency, one user might be screening a product video while someone else is backing up their computer.

A NAS storage solution is a low-cost way to consolidate storage. It’s also fairly easy to expand capacity with more or larger disks. Many different vendors offer NAS systems. You might select a NAS pre-populated with its storage disk or a diskless NAS that lets you add storage media.

Added NAS Advantages

For larger businesses, an array of NAS devices can do even more than storage. NAS can be an archive backup or be used in disaster recovery. Some NASs can support email, multimedia files, databases, or printing jobs, as well. In smaller businesses or home offices, a desktop NAS solution should suffice.

One more advantage of NAS? Most devices can set up a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) configuration. This lets you store data on many disks to increase performance and provide fault tolerance.

A NAS system is a little like giving your organization a private cloud. Offering safe, reliable data backup and digital media storage, this solution is becoming more popular with enterprises and small businesses alike. With a NAS, your users no longer need to worry about out-of-sync data, reliability, or accessibility issues. The NAS can offer peace of mind while extending business collaboration and providing competitive advantage.

Your external storage devices aren’t invincible. Don’t risk losing your important digital media files. Set up a network attached storage for cleaner, safer convenience.

Our experts are happy to help your business identify the best NAS for your needs and set it up on your network. Give us a call at (515)422-1995.

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