PC Storage Calculator
Add rough amounts for Windows, apps, games, and media. The result is an approximate drive size, not a shopping rule.
Presets
Estimated storage required
95.0 GB
A 256 GB drive would give you comfortable room for this workload, after allowing for the space Windows cannot use and some free space.
Advertised drive sizes use decimal gigabytes. After formatting, Windows also keeps some space for itself, so a "512 GB" SSD shows less usable space than 512.
If the estimate is high because your current drive is full, start with finding large files or freeing disk space before replacing hardware.
How this tool works
Totals use decimal units (1 GB = 1,000 MB). We add headroom so the recommendation is larger than the sum of your categories, then pick a common retail size (256 GB through 8 TB+).
Nothing is uploaded. Presets are starting points you can edit.
Important limitations
Games, 4K video, and photo libraries vary wildly. This cannot see what is already on your disk. For health questions, use the SSD/HDD guide, a calculator cannot tell if a drive is failing.
Frequently asked questions
How much free space should I keep?
There is no universal percentage. Windows and updates need spare room on C:; many people aim to keep tens of gigabytes free on a small SSD, or roughly a tenth of a large disk, so the PC is not constantly full. A drive that is packed all the time also makes it harder to copy files off if the disk starts to fail.
Why is usable space less than advertised?
Makers advertise decimal gigabytes. File systems and hidden recovery partitions take a cut. Windows also needs working space. Plan using the advertised size as a ceiling, not the number Explorer will show.