What can 5 GB be used for?
When you create an account with us, you can back up to 5 GB for free to get started.
In 5 GB you can back up, for example, either:
- 2,000 photos from your camera
- 17,500 documents
- 1,450 MP3 files
- 15 minutes of video in the best quality (4K)
If 5 GB isn’t enough for you, you can upgrade your account with us and get unlimited space. Then you won’t have to think about sizes at all. There is no upper limit on how much you store; above 5 TB we reduce upload speed, while download speed stays the same.
Even so, here is a walkthrough of how digital files are measured in size, and what that means.
Hopefully it gives you a slightly better chance of understanding and keeping up when you back up your computer.
For many people, storage terms can feel like an abstract quantity when it comes to digital content.
The size of a file can’t be measured in centimetres or cubic metres; it’s measured in bits, which are the digital building blocks.
In this blog post we’ll simplify things and explain what the size of a file means, with examples, so you can better understand what 5 GB, for instance, means.
That’s the amount of space you can use for free with us when you sign up.
The space can be used for backup and storage of your files in the cloud.
What you get in this article: an understanding of how much different file types take up (documents, photos, video, music and games), a plain explanation of what 1 bit is, and an overview to tie it all together. Reading time: 5-8 minutes.
Documents
300 KB – 2 MB
An ordinary text document takes up almost nothing these days. And even if you have dozens of pages with images and diagrams, it’s nothing that challenges your computer much.
With Onlime you can back up every document type and view them on your phone when you’re on the go.
PDF files usually take up more than ordinary text files like .doc (Microsoft Word) and .RTF.
Photos
2 MB – 10 MB
Ordinary photos taken with a digital camera or a newer smartphone fall in this size range. If you shoot in RAW (professional photographer), photos typically take up about 3 times as much.
If you’ve scanned old photos onto your computer, the size varies a lot depending on the resolution and the quality of the scanner.
With an Onlime account, all your photos are gathered into one timeline, so you can easily reach old memories. And with unlimited space, there’s room for all your photos from all your devices.
Special image files such as .TIFF and various RAW files take up more than 10 MB.
Video
Most people today record video on their mobile phone. And the quality keeps rising thanks to better resolution. The size of course also depends on the length of the video.
- GoPro Hero 4 – 1 minute in the best quality (4K, 30 fps): 400-500 MB
- iPhone 6 – 1 minute in good quality (1080p): 100-150 MB
- iPhone 6 – 1 minute in the best quality (4K): 300-400 MB
- iPhone 7 – 1 minute in good quality (1080p): 100-150 MB
- iPhone 7 – 1 minute in the best quality (4K): 300-400 MB
- Samsung Galaxy – 1 minute in the best quality (4K): 300-400 MB
With unlimited space at Onlime, you don’t have to worry about how big your video files are.
There’s room for all of them, including your large 4K videos, which are slowly becoming the standard.
Especially when you back up your iPhone, it’s handy to have plenty of space for the large videos.
Music files
As with all other files, the size depends on the quality. You may already have switched fully to music streaming like Spotify or Apple Music, but it’s useful to know how much the files take up anyway.
3-5 MB: Ordinary MP3 files.
30-40 MB: Music files in CD quality
8-15 MB: 1 minute of audio recorded on an iPhone
Computer games
A few MB – 50-60 GB
There’s huge variation in the size of computer games. Just about every size is represented here, and the trend only looks set to continue. The games industry has been, and still is, developing at a massive pace, so on this front the size will keep varying constantly.
There’s less need to back up your computer games, though, since you always have either the installation disks or can download the game from the maker’s website. It can be a good idea to back up your games’ saved data, however.
What is a bit?
A bit is a binary unit. That means the unit can hold 2 values, and when we’re talking about digital data this value can be either 0 or 1.
You may have heard of the ‘byte’. A byte is 8 bits, for example 11001110 - together that’s a row of 0s and 1s totalling 8 characters, and that makes up one byte.
Typically a letter or a character on your computer takes up 1 byte.
It’s normal to measure the size of files in bytes - kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte and terabyte are words that most people probably recognize by now.
Talking about 0s and 1s can get abstract, but a very concrete example is the ordinary wall socket.
Switching it on is the equivalent of a 1, and switching it off is the equivalent of a 0. The socket only has these two values that you can assign to it. If you imagine making a row of 8 ‘flicks of the switch’ - for example “on, on, off, on, off, off, off, on” - then you have 8 values, and therefore a byte.
It bears a suspicious resemblance to Morse code.
You can probably imagine that image files and documents quickly come to consist of many ‘flicks of the switch’ as the content gets bigger, the document longer or the image more detailed. That’s why long lines of 0s and 1s are shortened into kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte and terabyte. Because computers think in binary, space and memory are measured in values of 2. That means:
Kilobyte (KB) is 1,024 bytes (2^10)
Megabyte (MB) is 1,048,576 bytes (2^20)
Gigabyte (GB) is 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30)
So when a file takes up 1 megabyte (MB), the computer has to ‘read’ 1,048,576 0s and 1s. On our computers this happens in a split second.
To put it in perspective, it’s useful to know the following:
1,024 MB = 1 GB
With all those numbers it can still feel abstract, so below you’ll find an overview of how much different everyday files take up. That makes it easier to work out for yourself how much space you need, and to understand the relationship between your files and the size of your computer’s hard drive, for example.
Wondering how fast you can back up with us? Take our speed test and check how fast your connection is to our servers.
Why do file sizes matter?
File sizes have a direct effect on how many of them you can keep on your computer or smartphone. That’s why it’s worth knowing something about them, because otherwise it can get confusing if your computer or phone suddenly reports an error saying it’s out of space.
The focus on file sizes isn’t as big as it used to be, though.
In recent years, the development of data storage has moved very fast. Hard drives have grown bigger on the inside and smaller on the outside, so storing data has become a given and a point that isn’t as relevant anymore. Space and price have gone their separate ways - more space for less money.
With the best cloud storage, the possibilities are boundless and the space unlimited. That removes any worry or awareness of file sizes, because they become insignificant with unlimited space.
It’s still a good thing to know, all the same. It gives you a better sense of what’s going on behind the screen, and that’s what we hope you’ve taken away from today’s post.
Thanks for reading.
