What’s more frustrating than going to install a new game only to find you don’t have enough storage space? Now you have to delete something before you can start playing. Or maybe your system starts to crawl because storage space is running low. (Not a myth!)
Such is the experience faced by every 512GB laptop and desktop PC owner—and it’s time it stopped. Yes, I know memory and storage prices are crazy right now, but you don’t have to accept lower RAM and SSD capacities because of it. You deserve better.
In 2026, a 1TB SSD should be the bare minimum for modern laptops and desktops. Anything less just isn’t enough space. Here’s why.
512GB isn’t actually 512GB
The most common storage capacity for an entry-level laptop is a half-terabyte SSD. But while 512GB should give you enough space for the operating system, a handful of big games, and all your work/school files, it’s not really the half-terabyte it’s marketed as.
Due to overprovisioning (which protects drive health), that 512GB SSD will have less than 500GB of usable storage space. Once you include Windows 11 and its various updates, driver installs, plus basic apps and bloatware, that brand-new laptop with “512GB” of storage space may actually only have 450GB of usable space on day one.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
And even then, you can’t use all of it. Best practices for maintaining peak SSD performance and ensuring long-term SSD health are to leave between 10% to 30% of the drive free so that the controller can shuffle data around and keep the flash cells fresh. If we aim for the middle at 20%, that means a further 100GB we can’t use.
In the end, a laptop with 512GB of storage space has a realistic usable storage capacity of 350GB. Given how large apps, games, and videos have gotten these days, that’s simply not enough.
Triple-A games are enormous
It isn’t the fault of PC makers that modern triple-A games have bloated to ridiculous sizes. Live service development, bundling multiplayer and single-player modes in a single game install, expansive open worlds, and enormous texture resolutions—they’ve all led to modern games now requiring enormous amounts of storage space… and that’s before we even start to consider updates and DLCs.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a 150GB game. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor takes up 155GB. God of War Ragnarök can take up 190GB and the latest Call of Duty games need 180GB+. The DSC World combat flight simulator is anywhere between 200GB and 500GB just on its own.
Larian Studios
Sure, if you’re looking to play most of these games, you aren’t doing so on an entry-level laptop with a 512GB SSD. Or maybe you are! With upscaling and frame generation, mid-range gaming laptops now have the graphical power to run the latest triple-A games (albeit at modest settings and resolutions).
With a laptop that only has a half-terabyte of storage space, you’re forced to frequently uninstall and reinstall games at best… or locked out of entire gaming experiences at worst.
Who knows when prices will come down?
Look, I get it. Wanting more storage during a storage shortage—one that’s driving storage prices higher than they’ve been in a long time—might seem like a bad idea. But there’s more to it.
In fact, it’s actually getting ahead of the real problem: no one has any idea when, or even if, storage will become cheaper again.
The AI bubble might burst next week… or it may never burst. If that’s the case, it would mean storage prices remain inflated for months or even years to come. If NAND flash shortages last, storage prices are going to keep rising—and dramatically so. We’ve already seen SSD prices more than double in the past year, and they could go up by another order of magnitude before they start to come down again.
All of this means that upgrading a PC or laptop with more storage down the road is basically no longer an option. Whatever comes in your machine is what you’re going to be stuck with. And if that’s the case, 512GB isn’t going to cut it. We need to start with 1TB at minimum, at least if we don’t want to be gouged later on. (In the meantime, check out my tips on outsmarting the current RAM crisis.)
Your offline life needs space, too
Ubiquitous cloud storage is the main reason why 1TB hasn’t become the norm yet. How many gigabytes of photos, videos, and important files do you have on your phone? If all that wasn’t backed up on the cloud, you’d need to keep local copies! (I mean, you should be keeping local copies of all your important files anyway, but that’s for another article…)
There are so many reasons why storing local copies of files is a good habit to develop, but the most vital (if you ask me) is having full control over your most sensitive data. That means even if Google’s or Microsoft’s servers go down, or even if your internet service drops for the day, you never lack access to what you need.
That means you can’t afford to neglect local storage, and that means you need more storage capacity. Sure, you can always add external drives, but isn’t it better to have lots of storage by default?
Jon Martindale / Foundry
A terabyte gives you enough space for apps, games, and important files. That much storage capacity also gives you plenty of space to save work documents locally for offline editing, extra room for podcast downloads, Teams/Zoom recordings, downloaded music libraries, etc.
With at least 1TB of storage, you can conveniently use your PC however you want, downloading whatever you want, without worrying about hitting limits or moving stuff elsewhere. With 512GB or less, you will spend a serious amount of time juggling files and deleting stuff you might have wanted to keep but can’t.
Everything is 4K now
Whether it’s a Zoom meeting recording, a family video, a downloaded streaming show, a YouTube video rip, or your new security camera or video doorbell, it’s at least 1080p quality—but 4K is becoming more and more common these days. And you know what that means? 4K video has nearly 4x the pixels of 1080p video.
Reolink
Two decades ago, downloading a 720p movie would’ve taken up less than 1GB. Today, a single episode of your favorite TV show can take up 10GB or more if you’re grabbing it in 4K with a high bitrate.
Downloading episodes of your kid’s favorite shows for the holidays, or making sure you can enjoy your comfort movies while traveling, is a lot easier with a 1TB drive than it is with anything less.
It’s cheaper for them than for us
It’s not like adding a 1TB drive to your laptop costs the same for a manufacturer as it does for you or me. We have to pay full retail with taxes and shipping and all the other incidentals of the supply chain. For a manufacturer, swapping out a 512GB drive for a 1TB drive is comparatively negligible. Why should we have to eat the costs?
Due to economies of scale, device manufacturers have much stronger purchasing power than you or I do when building devices. That means they’re getting parts at a steep discount compared to what we pay. Shipping a laptop or desktop PC with 1TB should be way cheaper than forcing us to grab more storage after the fact.
Stuff like this is one of the reasons why buying the cheapest laptop on the shelf is a terrible idea.
Alright, not everyone needs 1TB
I’ll add a huge caveat to this article: 512GB is fine for some people. If you’re just looking to grab a homework machine, or something light to write emails with, or a simple Netflix streamer for your grandparents, then an entry-level laptop with a half-terabyte of storage can be OK.
But for just about everyone else, it’s no longer enough. Game installs are too big, downloaded videos are larger than ever, files and documents can quickly eat up space, and ever-rising storage costs make it less economical to add or upgrade storage later.
1TB should be the norm, and it should be the responsibility of manufacturers to make it happen.
Further reading: The best SSDs today, from budget to premium
Author: Jon Martindale, Contributor, PCWorld
Jon Martindale is a voracious writer and technology fanboy who loves nothing more than digging into the specs of the latest graphics cards, processors, and displays. He's passionate about everything PC, but also enjoys experimenting with AIs, and covering new standing desks that can help avoid his worst posture habits.