When you’re moving to a new home you’re forced to consider exactly how much stuff has been piling up in the back of closets and in boxes under your desk. It may not have made a different to you yet but now that’s just more stuff that you’re going to need to pack up and find a space for in your new place. Or else leave it on the street corner an hour before the movers arrive and hope that your trash is someone else’s treasure.

Well, it’s no different on your computer. If you’re getting a new computer or starting to back up your files (which you should be doing already anyway) you’ll have to start considering how much space you want and how much of your data you really need. Let’s focus here on how much space you’ll want when you’re starting to backup your data. Of course, that depends if you’re using an external hard-drive or an online backup service. Online backup is a small monthly expense, whereas an external hard drive has a larger one-time cost. So if you’ve bought a hard-drive once you don’t want to do it again anytime soon. That’s why it makes sense to invest in a larger one than you need. As your stuff inevitably accumulates, you don’t want to be stuck having to pick and choose which of your documents and photos will be protected and which will be left sitting on the street corner.

The decision is somewhat different with online backup. Because it’s a monthly plan, you can always upgrade if you see that your saved data is growing faster than you expected. Most online backup providers include 75GB of storage in a basic home plan and much larger amounts for a business plan. However, there are also some who offer home based users a variety of options ranging from 25GB to 150GB.Your best bet is to check how much data your computer is storing now and then round up. Make sure you’ve gotten a little bit more storage space than you strictly need and remember that you can always get more later.