For novice buyers of computers or of a separate hard drive, it's often hard to tell exactly how big you should go. Many people don't even have a good idea of what a "gigabyte" is or how much space there files will take up. How exactly do you figure out how much storage space you'll need?

If you already have a computer, this is actually an extremely easy thing to figure out. Right-click on your C: drive under the My Computer option, and select "Properties." This will bring up a little pie chart that tells you how much space you have and how much you are using. It will tell you in "gigabytes" or "GB", a unit of storage space. Once you've found out how much you're currently using, you should make sure that you get a hard drive that has at least a little more - you'll want at least 20-25% more than what you're currently using, just to allow yourself room to grow. If you're on the low end (under 20 gigabytes), you should get even more, mainly because newer programs will take up more and more space. What if you don't already have computer space to measure? It depends on what you're doing with it. If you're just using your computer for basic business functions (e-mail, typing, etc.) then you only need 20-40 gigabytes. If you're using it for games, you'll want as much as you can get. If you have more advanced business functions (such as graphics design), then go for at least 100 gigabytes or so. The most important thing is that you don't want to run out - if you do, you'll have to delete something or buy a whole new drive.