As personal computers (PCs) make the leap from traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) to solid-state drives (SSDs), the demand for storage capacity has surged. The U.S.-based tech publication PCWorld recently published an article arguing that storage options of 256GB and 512GB are no longer sufficient to meet modern needs, and that PCs should come equipped with 1TB drives as standard. The article explains that after accounting for the operating system and essential software installations, the actual available space on a 512GB drive often dips below 450GB. Furthermore, today’s high-end AAA games frequently demand over 100GB of storage each. When you factor in the growing appetite for multimedia content—such as videos and photos—local storage quickly becomes a bottleneck. On top of that, SSDs require a portion of their capacity to be reserved as over-provisioning (OP) space to sustain performance and extend their lifespan, which further shrinks the usable storage.

However, the rising cost of flash memory has made 1TB SSDs generally two to four times more expensive than they were previously, creating a hurdle for their widespread adoption. Despite this, PCWorld insists that 1TB should be the new baseline for PC storage.