Is 2 Terabytes Considered a Lot?

When it comes to determining whether 2 terabytes (TB) is considered a lot, the answer depends largely on the context in which it is being used. Whether your primary needs revolve around personal use, gaming, professional applications, or cloud storage, this amount of storage space can indeed make a significant difference. Let’s explore the different perspectives on this matter.

1. Personal Use

For the average user, 2 TB of storage is quite generous and can accommodate a variety of data types and quantities:

Photos: Approximately 500,000 photos can be stored, assuming each photo is around 4 MB in size. Video: Around 500 hours of high-definition (HD) video can be stored, with each hour estimated at 4 GB. Documents and Music: A substantial amount of documents, music files, and other types of data can be stored, depending on file sizes.

2. Gaming

Modern video games can consume a significant amount of storage. With many games ranging from 20 GB to over 100 GB, 2 TB of storage would be more than sufficient to hold around 20 to 100 games, depending on their individual sizes.

3. Professional Use

For professionals dealing with large media files, such as video editors or photographers, 2 TB of storage may be inadequate. Especially when working with high-resolution video or large image files, this amount may still fall short.

4. Cloud Storage

Cloud storage can be a great way to handle and access data from multiple devices. For personal backups and file storage, 2 TB is a sizable amount that can effectively cover your needs.

Overall, for typical personal and casual use, 2 TB is generally considered a lot. However, for more intensive professional applications, it may be less than adequate.

Personal Insights

To provide a more personal perspective, let's look at different individuals' viewpoints on 2 TB storage:

My Mom

My mom: beyond imagination. She currently sits happily on a 240GB SSD, with perhaps 25 GB used. This is a remarkably small amount of storage, and she would not consider 2 TB to be a lot.

My Wife

My wife: okay. She uses a laptop with a 240GB SSD and has approximately 80 GB of space used on it. Additionally, she has a 500GB HDD with about 50 GB in use. A 2 TB SSD would provide her with plenty of space and likely make her very happy for a long time.

My Perspective

Me: not okay. I currently have 2x 6TB HDDs, with 1TB mirrored, making it a more like 1.5TB set up. I also have a 1TB NVMe drive, half of which is data and the other half is cache for the HDDs, with LVM2 set up for the cache. The total used space is around 80% of 24TB. My current storage configuration includes:

2x 8TB HDDs, each with the first 2TB mirrored. This mirror contains encrypted personal data, photos, documents, etc. Remaining 12TB of storage is for long-term cold storage, with volumes LVM2 cached on SSDs. A Fast 2TB NVMe drive for various Linux and BSD operating systems, with some HDD acceleration and cache. A Fast 2TB NVMe drive for Windows with games installed. A Normal 4TB NVMe drive for the home directory and caches for common Linux systems.

With a total of 24TB of storage, I would say that the cold storage setup is full, and the backup server’s old 2x6TB pair is a full mirror.

These personal examples illustrate the wide range of storage needs and preferences, highlighting that 2TB can be considered both a lot and not enough, depending on the usage context and individual requirements.