How much disk space do I need?

Your library’s disk space is proportional to the number of photos and videos you have in your library, and whether or not you choose to have PhotoStructure organize your photos and videos by copying them into your library.

See also:

How big are photos and videos? 🔗

Digital photo and video file sizes vary greatly between cameras.

1 gigabyte (8 billion bits) will store:

  • thousands of pictures from a digital camera from 10 years ago
  • about 100 JPEGs from a recent full-frame SLR
  • about 20 RAW photos from a recent full-frame SLR
  • less than a minute of 4K 60 fps video

How do I safely store my files? 🔗

The secret is to have more than one copy. Read more about safe file storage here.

How much additional disk space does PhotoStructure need? 🔗

PhotoStructure builds preview images and transcodes videos so they are viewable across most mobile and desktop browsers. This consumes, roughly, 2GB per 1,000 photos and videos in your library.

As an example, if you have 250,000 images and videos, your previews will consume about .5TB. If your library is predominantly videos, this may be much larger.

Note that transcoded videos consume strictly less data than the original video, but can still be very large (see the prior section).

How can I minimize the disk space that PhotoStructure uses? 🔗

The default settings are optimized for viewing your images and videos on a 4K display, but there are several ways to reduce disk consumption, at the expense of browsing speed.

Change the following library settings:

  1. Shut down PhotoStructure, navigate to your library, and open .photostructure/settings.toml in a text editor. TextEdit on Mac and Wordpad on Windows will work fine.
  2. If you don’t need to stream videos, set the transcodeVideos setting to false.
  3. Edit the previewResolutions to contain fewer resolutions. Setting this to an empty array will still create a qqvga preview (as it is required for image analysis), and is equivalent to using ["qqvga"].
  4. Restart PhotoStructure, and run rebuild from the ☰ nav menu. Note that this will take a while, depending on how large your library is.

Oops, I’ve changed my mind: I want my videos to be transcoded 🔗

Just follow the above steps, but set transcodeVideos setting to true.

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Hi! I’m Matthew, the author of PhotoStructure. I’m a dad, amateur photographer, and author of open source, adtech, fintech, and edtech software since the turn of the millennium. He/him. I am building a self-hosted, safe, and fast new home for all your photos and videos.
Your memories deserve PhotoStructure. Try it out for free!