How Much Cloud Storage Do You Actually Need?
"Just get the bigger plan to be safe" is expensive advice. Here's what actually fills up a terabyte in practice, so you can pick 1 TB or 2 TB with real numbers instead of a guess.
Start with what you're actually storing
Cloud storage needs are almost never about documents — a lifetime of PDFs, spreadsheets, and Word files rarely breaks a few gigabytes. The space goes to photos and video. So the real question is: how many photos and how much video, and at what quality?
Typical file sizes, for reference
| File type | Typical size | Files per 100 GB |
|---|---|---|
| Phone photo (JPEG/HEIC) | 3–6 MB | ~20,000 |
| DSLR/mirrorless RAW photo | 25–45 MB | ~2,800 |
| Phone video, 4K | ~350 MB / minute | ~285 minutes |
| Edited 4K video project export | 1–4 GB | ~35–100 files |
| Office documents (PDF, DOCX) | 0.1–2 MB | 50,000+ |
1 TB is plenty if...
- You mainly back up phone photos and videos, not RAW camera files
- You're one person (not consolidating a whole family's archive)
- You want years of headroom without thinking about it again
A rough rule of thumb: at typical phone-camera usage, 1 TB comfortably holds 10+ years of photos and videos for one person, plus a full document archive, with room to spare.
2 TB makes sense if...
- You shoot RAW photography or edit 4K/8K video regularly
- You're backing up a shared family archive from multiple devices into one vault
- You keep large project files — design assets, music production sessions, CAD files
- You want enough headroom that you never have to think about upgrading
The overlooked factor: file size limits
Total capacity isn't the only number that matters — check the per-file limit too. LifetimeCloud supports files up to 10 GB each, which comfortably covers full 4K video exports and large RAW batches without needing to split archives into chunks.
What if you're not sure?
Upgrading later is possible on LifetimeCloud — you pay the difference between plans and your account updates immediately, no re-purchase or migration needed. If you're genuinely unsure, 1 TB is the lower-risk starting point; you're not locked out of more space later.
1 TB or 2 TB — both are yours forever.
€49 for 1 TB, €79 for 2 TB during the August launch offer. Pick the size that fits, upgrade later if you need to.
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