There are hundreds of cloud storage companies available to individuals and businesses, allowing safe storage of data. In order to stay competitive with each other, these companies may offer different limits on the amount and type of data that can be stored on their servers.
Before you sign up and beginning uploading thousands of files, photos, or music, you should consider how much space you are going to require. This will be contingent on the amount and type of data you will be storing; while text files may be small, high definition movies can exceed one or two gigabytes. There are different ways to determine this, depending on whether you are using a Windows or a Mac computer.
Determine The Size Of Your Files
For Windows 7 users, verifying the size of your files is relatively easy: Open Windows Explorer and click on Libraries, then simply right click one of the libraries and select Properties. For example, if you wanted to know the size of your music files, you would right click on the Music library and select Properties. In the dialog box that opens up, you will find the size of all the files in that library. The same is true for any folder or file located on your computer, simply right click and select Properties. If you are using a Mac computer, all you need to do is right click on a folder and you’ll find the size in the upper right corner.
How Much Online Storage Space Do You Really Need?
After determining the total size of the files that will be backed up, you are almost ready to find a cloud storage solution. At this point, you may be thinking that since you know the size of the files, that is how much space is going to be required. Finding a cloud storage company that offers an amount of space equal to the size of your files is not recommended, since you may later add more files, you would end up needing to delete files first.
Take the total size of your files and add 50%, this should be the minimum amount of storage space to look for in a cloud storage solution. To be on the safe side, double the total size of your files. If you have 30 gigabytes of data, you should have at least 45 gigabytes of storage; to be safe, it would be best to find an online cloud storage solution that offers 60 gigabytes.
How Many Files Will 1GB Hold?
To get a better idea of how many files it takes to reach 1 gigabytes, here are some examples by file type: Approximately 250 mp3 songs, 200 high resolution photos, 12,500 text documents, or 1 full-length movie. Now that you have a better understanding of the size of your files, and of file types in general, you are ready to go online and find a cloud storage solution that will work for you.