Online Backup: Visualizing 25GB of Storage

How much online backup/storage space do I need?

That entirely depends on what you want to backup. Some of us have precious digital photos, home videos, and other family keepsakes that aren’t stored anywhere except on the computer. Maybe you’ve got several school projects or papers you’d like to keep. Chances are that you’ve got a collection of music that you’d be hard pressed to re-collect. Whatever may be the case, if you’re going to backup ALL of the information that you should, you’re going to need more than a 2GB trial. While you may not have to go all the way to an unlimited plan, if you’re a digital pack-rat (hm, that could be a band name), you’ll want to be pretty generous on the storage space.

How many files can I fit in _GB?

Let’s visualize 25GB of storage. (That’s 25,600 megabytes). The fine folks from Norton Online Backup suggest that 25GB can be viewed as equivalent to:

• 6,000 songs
• 7,000 photos
• 100 hours of video
• 125,000 Word Documents
• 25,000 PowerPoint Presentations
• 200,000 spreadsheets

(note that they mean 25 GB can be one of these, not all of them collectively)

If we’ve done the math correctly (which , you know, we probably haven’t), that means that we could fit (now we’re talking collectively, so they all add up to be 25GB):

• The complete recorded works of the Beatles and Michael Jackson (310 and 750 songs, respectively)
• Pictures from 100 rolls of film
• The complete Lord of the Rings Trilogy with Extended Cuts (681 minutes)
• The complete Harry Potter Series and Twilight Trilogy (if each page-3,407 and 2,379, respectively, were saved on a separate word document)
• A PowerPoint presentation for each county in the United States (3,141)
• A spreadsheet for each McDonalds restaurant (30,000-ish)

And we’d still have a little space left over for say, the music files for Men Without Hats Greatest Hits.

So rather than fret over what to backup and what to leave behind, do yourself a favor and get more space than you need, with some room to grow. Read our reviews of the best online data backup solutions and online storage services and find one that meets your specific needs and size requirements. Or just jump straight to our review of SugarSync, an inexpensive, versatile online backup service.

Additional articles you may be interested in:

• Top 10 Files to Backup
• Online File Storage: Protect Your Files
• Online Storage is Replacing Large Hard Drives

Or check out some TopTenREVIEWS videos on the best online storage and backup services.

At TopTenREVIEWS, We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™