Short answer: a YouTuber publishing one 4K video a week needs about 240 GB of new storage a month and about 3 TB a year. A two-camera tech channel publishing six 4K reviews a month passes 1.3 TB a month and 15 TB a year. The footage is only half of it; project files, cache, proxies and exports add 30 to 50 percent on top.
What does one video actually cost in storage?
Start with the camera’s bitrate. Divide Mbps by 8 for MB per second, multiply by 60 for a minute and by 60 again for an hour. A mirrorless camera in 4K H.265 at 80 Mbps writes 10 MB per second, or 36 GB an hour; in 4K H.264 at 200 Mbps it writes 90 GB an hour.
Then count everything that is not footage:
- B-roll and second angles, often as much as the main take.
- The editing project, its media cache and render previews, typically 10 to 20 percent of the footage.
- Proxies, if you make them: about 10 GB per hour of source.
- The export. A 12-minute 4K upload at 50 Mbps is about 4.5 GB; a 1080p version is about 1.5 GB.
- Thumbnails, graphics, music and voice-over, small but never zero.
Storage per video, month and year for three creator profiles
| Profile | Camera format | Raw footage per video | Other per video | Per video | Videos a month | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly vlog | 4K H.265, about 80 Mbps, one camera plus phone | 1 hour, about 36 GB | about 25 GB | about 60 GB | 4 | about 240 GB | about 2.9 TB |
| Tech review | 4K H.264, about 200 Mbps, two cameras | 1.5 hours, about 135 GB | about 80 GB | about 215 GB | 6 | about 1.3 TB | about 15 TB |
| Hindi entertainment | 4K H.264, about 150 Mbps, three cameras | 3 hours, about 200 GB | about 20 GB | about 220 GB | 3 | about 660 GB | about 8 TB |
“Other” covers b-roll, screen recordings, project files, cache, proxies and exports. The tech review profile is high because product shots, screen captures and a second angle all pile up.
The per-codec figures behind the table are in how much storage one hour of 4K takes.
Where does it go wrong?
Month one, the footage lives on the Mac. A 1 TB MacBook has about 850 GB free, so the weekly vlogger is fine for three months and the tech reviewer for three weeks.
Month two or three, the first 2 TB external SSD arrives at ₹12,000 to ₹18,000. Old projects move across. Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro shows “media offline” the first time the drive is not plugged in.
Month six, there are two or three SSDs and a portable hard drive, nothing is labelled properly, and the one video that needs a re-cut is on the drive at the other flat. There is no second copy of anything. The cost calculator on driveless.in assumes about ₹1,950 a month in drives for this reason.
By year two the tech reviewer has spent over ₹1,00,000 on drives and still cannot answer “where is the footage from the March review”.
What should you keep, and for how long?
Keep everything for the first 30 to 60 days after publishing, when corrections, community-post clips and re-uploads happen.
After that, keep three things forever: the project file, the final export and any b-roll you are likely to reuse. They are a few gigabytes per video.
Raw footage is the decision. A vlogger rarely reopens last year’s raw. A tech channel does, for comparisons and round-ups, and a comedy channel does for compilations. If you will reuse it, archive it somewhere you can search and open; if not, delete it on a schedule.
How much storage should you plan for?
Take your monthly figure from the table, multiply by the number of months you keep raw footage, and add the permanent set of projects and exports. A weekly vlogger keeping six months of raw needs about 1.5 TB live. A tech channel keeping six months needs about 8 TB. If you are unsure of your own bitrate, the 1 TB planning table has every common format.
Where Driveless fits
Driveless is a streaming cloud drive for Mac, launching in India in January 2027. Your whole channel library appears in Finder as one drive, takes 0 KB on the MacBook, and streams only the frames you play, so the March review opens in seconds without hunting for an SSD. Every plan keeps three copies, 30 days of trash and daily snapshots. Solo gives 1 TB for ₹999 a month, or ₹699 a month locked for life for founding members who join the waitlist before launch. Plans are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
How much storage does one YouTube video take?
About 60 GB for a weekly 4K H.265 vlog, about 215 GB for a two-camera 4K tech review, and about 220 GB for a three-camera entertainment video, including footage, project files, cache and exports. Shooting in 1080p divides those figures by roughly four.
How much storage does a YouTuber need per year?
Roughly 3 TB a year for a weekly 4K vlog, 8 TB for three multi-camera videos a month, and 15 TB or more for a tech channel publishing six 4K reviews a month. What you need to keep live is smaller, because raw footage can be archived or deleted after a set period.
Should a YouTuber keep raw footage after publishing?
Keep it for at least a few months for corrections, re-cuts and compilation videos. After that, keep the project and the export, and archive or delete the raw footage according to how likely you are to reuse it.