2 Terabytes is a lot of space: it is in point of fact 2 million megabytes, and that gives you a very large photo album indeed! A typical 2 TB storage can hold up to 500,000 pictures!
How many pictures can 2 TB hold?
Just imagine that you wanted to completely fill your space on your new 2TB external hard drive, microSD card, or your newly acquired cloud allowance.
An average 4 megapixel photograph is 4 megabytes, nothing special and no effects of any nature. Are you still fretting over how quickly you filled the 50GB you got free with your new iCloud account?
OK, let’s fill that space working on creating only 4 megabyte photographs using your handy smartphone. We are of course looking at the capacity of 2TB and not the 50GB we thought would serve our lifetime requirement.
Then you will need to take in the region of 50 photographs an hour for each of your 14 hours, every day for 2 whole years.
At the end of those 2 years you will have just about filled your space.
How many photos can 2 TB hold in different megapixel resolutions
Note: the calculations below use JPG 100% 24bit/pixel compression
| Megapixels | Average Megabytes | Photographs in 2 TB |
| 4 | 1 | 2,000,000 |
| 6 | 1.5 | 1,333,333 |
| 8 | 1.7 | 1,176,470 |
| 10 | 2 | 1,000,000 |
| 12 | 2.5 | 800,000 |
| 14 | 3 | 666,666 |
| 16 | 3.3 | 606,060 |
| 18 | 3.7 | 540,540 |
So as you can see from the table, there’s a lot of storage and that means a lot of photographs that you can take, store and keep forever.
But it’s not just as simple as all that because these are only average numbers and the actual file size will vary depending on the colors and amount of detail in the photograph.
But staying in the realms of average and the realms of reasonable expectations the table above shows what you can expect.
How much video can 2 TB hold?
Video sizes vary greatly and will depend on the colors and encoding your camera uses.
Let’s take a quick look at the statistics for videos.
| Video size | Megabytes | Minutes of video in 2TB |
| 720p x 1 minute | 256 | 7,800 |
| 1080p x 1 minute | 403 | 4,962 |
| 2k x 1 minute | 430 | 4,651 |
| 4k x 1 minute | 2000 | 1,000 |
Conclusion
Ok that’s a wrap! A 2TB storage facility, whether you prefer to go for an external hard drive, a Cloud option, or a memory card will give you enough space that you will not have to worry about your storage ever again.
Also and just think about, keeping your photographs in a digital format means they will always be available for you and if you want to print one out. That copy will always be fresh, clear and new.
So, stop worrying about if it’s enough, yes it is. Get yourself set up and do it now don’t procrastinate about whether you should take it, give it a shot. Or are you one of those photographers who keeps everyone standing until no one can hold that smile anymore!
