Choosing a storage plan feels like guessing. Buy too little and you're deleting files at the worst moment. Buy too much and you pay every month for capacity you never touch. The way out is to base the decision on how big your files really are and how fast your collection grows.
First, a note on units
Storage is sold in decimal units, where 1 GB is one billion bytes and 1 TB is one thousand GB. Computers often report size in binary units, so a 1 TB drive appears as roughly 931 GB in your operating system. Nothing is missing. The two systems simply count differently. Cloud plans use the decimal convention, so plan around the number on the label.
How big are your files, really?
These are typical sizes; your own files will vary.
| Item | Typical size | Fits in 30 GB | Fits in 1 TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone photo (JPEG or HEIC) | About 3 MB | About 10,000 | About 330,000 |
| RAW photo from a camera | About 30 MB | About 1,000 | About 33,000 |
| 1 minute of 1080p video | About 100 MB | About 5 hours | About 165 hours |
| 1 minute of 4K phone video | About 300 MB | About 100 minutes | About 55 hours |
| PDF or Office document | About 0.5 MB | About 60,000 | About 2 million |
| MP3 song | About 4 MB | About 7,500 | About 250,000 |
The pattern is clear: documents barely register, photos add up steadily, and video is the thing that fills storage. Whether you need 30 GB or 1 TB depends mostly on how much video and how many RAW photos you keep.
Typical profiles
The light user
Mostly documents, a few thousand photos, and occasional videos. A free tier of around 30 GB is often enough, especially if you clear out old files.
The student
Notes, assignments, presentations and a few project videos. Documents are small, but screen recordings and group-project media grow quickly. Start on a free tier and watch usage each semester.
The family photographer
Years of photos and videos of children, festivals and travel. Video dominates. Several hundred gigabytes to a terabyte is common for a household that films a lot.
The creator or photographer
RAW files, raw footage and finished projects. A terabyte fills faster than you'd think, and many creators keep active projects in the cloud while archiving finished ones to drives.
The small team
Shared documents, client files and design assets. Estimate per person, then add room for growth, and remember that shared folders can cause duplicate copies unless you organize them carefully.
How to estimate your own number
- Check how much space your phone and computer use for photos, videos and documents.
- Add the size of any external drives or old archives you want to consolidate.
- Multiply the total by 1.5 to leave room for growth over the next couple of years.
- Compare that number with plan sizes, and pick the smallest plan that covers it comfortably.
Ways to need less
- Remove duplicates and near-identical photos.
- Delete blurry and accidental shots soon after taking them.
- Compress large videos you'll only watch on screen.
- Archive finished projects to an external drive, keeping only the deliverables online.
- Choose a service that stores identical files once instead of many times.
Free or paid?
A free tier is perfect for trying a service and for storing your most important documents and photos. Move to a paid plan when you're regularly deleting things to make room, when you want to consolidate scattered drives, or when you need the storage for work. NGDS includes 30 GB free, and its 1 TB plan is priced at ₹150 per month, so you can start small and only pay when your collection outgrows the free tier.