What is diskspace and how much space do I need for my web site?

Diskspace is the amount of hard disk space on your web hosting package. Years back, hosting companies would provide just a few megabytes (MBs) which was more than sufficient for a small or medium sized web site. However, now, with intense competition and increasing file sizes (video and audio), getting GBs (gigabytes) of storage space on your web hosting package is common.

The disk space allocated to you would take care of space used up by your web site (including images, music and sound files, video files...), email accounts, databases (if any), raw access logs, any installed programs or scripts etc.

How much space does your web site need?

If you've already got a web site, you can come to know of the diskspace requirements by checking the amount of space it takes up on your machine. Don't have a copy of your web site because it was designed by someone else? First, ask them to send you your web site on a CD or DVD. Don't just ask for a compressed or zip file. Get a proper copy of your web site with all files segregated into directories as they are laid out on the web site. Also, tell them to include any native files (such as Flash .fla or PhotoShop .psd files etc.) in a separate folder. You can then consult the developer for the space required by your web site.

If you haven't got a site yet, its diskspace requirements would depend on the type of web site you want to develop. For most business and simple personal web sites and blogs the space requirements are not much, unless you plan to store tons of video and music files. The point I'm trying to make is that space used by the web pages of your site is negligible compared to such heavyweights as music and video files. Let us now try to compute the space requirements for a 200 page web site.

The ideal size of a web page is 20kb (that's just the HTML page not counting included files such as image). However, it's not uncommon for web pages to exceed 50kb in size. This depends on the amount of text and the HTML code. Any way, let us assume the largest value. The space required by 200 web pages would thus be 200 X 50KB = 10,000KB or 10MB. Let us also assume that each web page has 100 kb of different images embedded. This makes another 20MB (200 X 100KB = 20,000KB or 20MB). So a 200 page web site would consume about 30MB (and this is very much on the higher side).

The space used by email accounts, databases etc. is also counted in the total web space. So if you have 50 email accounts each with 10MB storage an additional 500MB would be required.

Databases, if you have one on your web site, vary in size depending on the amount of data they store. Their sizes can range from 100KB to 100MB (sometimes even more).

To cut the long story short, any web hosting package offering more than 1GB would be more than sufficient. However, nowadays web hosting companies offer hundreds of gigabytes of storage space.

I'm planning to put very large files on my web hosting space

If you want to put very large files such as music and video files on your web hosting space, I think the space offered nowadays would be fine unless you want to go overboard. You can also purchase more space from your web hosting company if the need arises. However, more than space requirements, it would be the bandwidth that you should be bothered about. Uploading and downloading large files would not only need that the web hosting server uses a high speed connection but also a large bandwidth. Make sure you clarify this with your web host.

Some web hosts offer what they call unlimited bandwidth. Obviously this differs from company to company but based on my experience the unlimited bandwidth or unmetered bandwidth is actually not what it seems. There is always a clause attached to this so be sure to read the fine print.

Should you take web hosting with the largest diskspace?

Not necessarily. As I detailed above, the space requirements of a typical web site are not huge. You should be more concerned about the uptime guarantee, bandwidth and support from your web host.

Related reading - How much space do I need for my site on a web hosting server?