Photo & Video Storage Calculator
Size the drive or cloud plan your media library needs — JPEG/HEIC and RAW photos plus video by resolution and frame rate turned into gigabytes, with growth over the years, headroom, backup copies, the size Windows shows, a drive-fit table and upload time.
How it works
Photos GB = count × MB each ÷ 1,000 · Video GB = hours × 3,600 × Mbps ÷ 8 ÷ 1,000 · Future = today + years × (photos per month × 12 × MB + video minutes per month × 12 ÷ 60 × GB per hour) · Plan = future × (1 + headroom %) · Windows size = GB × 10⁹ ÷ 2³⁰
A media library is dominated by whichever format you shoot most. Photos are small and add up slowly: a phone HEIC is 2–4 MB, a camera JPEG 6–10 MB, and a RAW file 25–80 MB. Video is the storage hog, and its size depends only on the bitrate — megabits per second, set by the resolution, frame rate and codec. One hour at 8 Mbps (typical 1080p) is 3.6 GB; 4K at 50 Mbps is 22.5 GB an hour, and professional ProRes can pass 300 GB an hour. The calculator adds today’s photos, RAW files, video and any other files, then grows the library by what you add each month over the years you want the drive or plan to last. Headroom goes on top because a full drive slows down and leaves nowhere to put next month’s shoot. It then picks the smallest standard drive and cloud tier that fits, shows the figure Windows would report (it counts in binary GiB, so a 1 TB drive appears as 931 GB), sizes every backup copy you plan to keep, and estimates how long the first cloud upload takes at your upload speed.
Worked example
10,000 JPEGs at 6 MB each is 60 GB. Add 20 hours of 1080p video at 8 Mbps — 8 × 3,600 ÷ 8 ÷ 1,000 = 3.6 GB per hour × 20 = 72 GB — for 132 GB today. Adding 200 photos (1.2 MB × 12 = 14.4 GB a year) and 30 minutes of video a month (6 hours = 21.6 GB a year) grows that by 36 GB a year, to 240 GB after 3 years. With 30% headroom you should plan for 312 GB, so a 500 GB drive (or a 1 TB cloud tier) is the right size; a 256 GB drive would already be too small.
Frequently asked questions
How much space does 4K video really take?
It depends on the bitrate. A phone recording 4K at 30 fps in HEVC uses about 23 Mbps — around 170 MB a minute or 10 GB an hour. A camera recording 4K at 50–100 Mbps uses 22–45 GB an hour, and ProRes 422 HQ about 318 GB an hour. Pick the matching quality or enter your own bitrate.
Why does my 1 TB drive show only 931 GB?
Drive makers count 1 TB as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, while Windows divides by 1,024 three times and still labels the result “GB”. Nothing is missing: 10¹² ÷ 2³⁰ = 931. The calculator shows both figures so you can compare with what your computer reports.
Should I size for exactly what I have now?
No — libraries only grow. Enter how many photos and how much video you add a month and how many years the drive should last; the calculator projects the library forward and adds headroom (30% by default) so the drive doesn’t end up full.
Do RAW photos change the answer a lot?
Yes. RAW files run 25–80 MB against 2–10 MB for HEIC or JPEG, so a RAW shooter needs five to twenty times the photo storage. Enter RAW files separately with their own average size to see the difference.
How long will the first cloud backup take?
Upload time is the library size in megabits divided by your upload speed: 132 GB × 8,000 ÷ 20 Mbps ≈ 52,800 seconds, about 14.7 hours, before any throttling. Home connections often upload far slower than they download, so check your upload figure.
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This calculator is for educational purposes. Double-check important results before acting on them.