How much of web hosting server hard-disk space do I need for my site?

I got 100MB storage with my web hosting package - that was in 1999. The hard disk space offered by web hosts has increased tremendously since those days. You can now get 100, 200, even 300 GB hosting space for a much lesser price than what I had paid in 1999! Some companies like Hostgator are even providing unlimited space.

Coming back to the question we were addressing - how much web space do you need for a web site?
Should you take a hosting package with 100GB space or one with 200GB space?

This depends on the kind of web site you want to develop. For example, if you envisage a web site with lots of large files (such as music or video), you would definitely need larger web space than the average web site. Let us now look at some figures.

A web page should ideally be less than 20kb, and that is only the HTML. If we include external JavaScript file (average 2kb), external Cascading Style Sheets file (average 2kb), and embedded images (not more than 50 kb), the total size of the web page becomes 74kb. And if your web site has a hundred pages, it would require 7.5MB. So it hardly makes a difference if you take hosting with 100GB or 200GB - the question being, would you ever utilize all the space provided by your web host?

On the other hand, if you are planning to have downloadable music and video files which are generally large files, I suggest that you work out an estimate size and procure hosting that has at least twice the file size (to be prepared for the future).

That said, I think the space requirements of a typical company web site are very very small compared to the web space offered by most web hosting companies today. And so the amount of hard disk space offered in a hosting package should not affect your decision, unless, you plan to host a special kind of web site that has very large video and music files.

FYI, the web space offered in a hosting package includes the space of databases and email accounts so do not take hosting if the space offered is less than 50MB.

Finally, if you fall short, you can either purchase additional hard disk space from your web hosting company or if that's proving expensive, change your web hosting.