Are Hard Drives Necessary in the Age of the Cloud?

A laptop’s hard disk has always been a big decision when purchasing a new laptop. Do we want a 500GB hard drive, or even a 1TB or higher, to store our files safely?

Meanwhile, in your pocket, the infamous “iPhone storage Full” alert is a frustration — especially if you do the equivalent of hitting the snooze button 27 times a day without taking action. But how did we get here?

Prompted by a colleague’s question that “It’s okay if I buy a laptop once I get abroad, right? Everything’s on the cloud anyway?” We realized there’s a hidden truth there — do we really need more than a few gigs of space on our machines?

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Today, We Make a Lot of Data
3. The Case for Hard Drives
4. Does Size Matter in the Age of the Cloud?
5. The Bottom Line

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Today, We Make a Lot of Data
3. The Case for Hard Drives
Show Full Guide
4. Does Size Matter in the Age of the Cloud?
5. The Bottom Line

Today, We Make a Lot of Data

Looking back at the past through rose-tinted glasses, we have come a long way since the floppy disk, which had a meager storage capacity of 1.44MB.

From these humble beginnings, we now add 402.74 million terabytes of data daily, and this figure is predicted to reach 181 zettabytes annually by 2025.

Unsurprisingly, 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years, and cloud storage is expected to cross 200 zettabytes by 2025.

Given these data trends and our increasingly digital lifestyles, which depend on ease and access, are traditional hard drives still important when choosing a new laptop or any digital device?

Meanwhile, cloud storage has revolutionized how we deal with data, and we often take the ability to access our data from any device network or location for granted.

Maybe you have forgotten the dance of blue screens of death and safe mode tangos. These were often followed by disk defragmenting waltzes and a grand finale where a hard drive failure swept years of memories and work off the stage. Truly, it is a performance of tragedy worthy of a standing ovation from the data recovery gods.

With Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud at our disposal, we can save vast amounts of data without fretting about your laptop’s hard disk capacity. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road for local storage.

The Case for Hard Drives

Despite the advantages of cloud storage, laptop hard drives remain a critical component of our digital toolkit for several compelling reasons.

1. Offline Access

A robust hard drive means access to files even without an internet connection. This facility is crucial for people who travel a lot or who live in areas with spotty internet connectivity.

Imagine working on a long-haul flight or in any other remote location where connectivity is minimal. In these situations, locality gives the reliability needed to access important documents.

For some, working offline is simply a convenience; for others, it is far from that.

Think of a journalist whose stories are from far-flung places or researchers doing fieldwork in some peripheral location. Business users on an almost perpetual move also need reliable offline access to their data. This aspect of local storage remains one of its enormous advantages over a cloud solution alone.

2. Performance

Specific applications demand speed and efficiency, which only local storage can provide. High-performance tasks like video editing, virtual machines, and complex development environments benefit significantly from hard drives’ rapid data retrieval speeds, particularly Solid State Drives (SSDs).

While cloud services offer convenience, they often cannot match local storage performance for these resource-intensive tasks. The latency and bandwidth limitations of cloud storage can impede the smooth operation of such applications.

Moreover, the increasing popularity of gaming laptops underscores the importance of local storage. Gamers require fast read/write speeds to ensure smooth gameplay and quick loading times. SSDs, with their superior performance, are often the preferred choice in gaming laptops, highlighting the continued relevance of local storage in high-demand scenarios.

3. Cost

The economics of storage also play a vital role. Most cloud storage companies offer free tiers, but their capacity is already limited. Substantial storage needs to use up paid accounts, which can add up over time. On the other hand, a large hard drive is only a one-time investment, which could be more cost-effective in the long run. So, for people requiring massive storage, this financial factor remains paramount.

Take the case of a small business owner who has to deal with heavy data storage. A few years’ subscriptions to cloud storage facilities will cost more than buying a single laptop with high-capacity hard drive space. Indeed, for many, this economic reality underlines the value of maintaining significant local storage capacity.

4. Security and Privacy

Security and privacy of data are the prime concerns of this digital world. Storage of sensitive information in the cloud carries several associated risks; for instance, it could be hacked or accessed by people with ulterior motives.

While cloud providers take reasonable care in protecting the information stored elsewhere, the risk is ever-present. With a robust encryption and backup strategy to back it up, local storage offers much more control over one’s data security. It adds to peace of mind that sensitive information is safe and only accessible to approved authorized people, which may not be so probable with cloud solutions.

This is an advantage to sectors like healthcare, financial services, or legal services that require maximum confidentiality and security. For instance, it would be preferable for medical professionals dealing with patients’ optical records or lawyers handling confidential case files to store these data locally rather than risk data breaches or the dire consequences of data loss, not to mention the penalties that come with inadequate personal data protection.

Does Size Matter in the Age of the Cloud?

When buying a new laptop, 1TB of storage space will be overkill for most users. Whether you are in your home, office, coffee shop, or tethering from your phone in an area without free Wi-Fi, there will only be a few occasions when you don’t have access to an internet connection.

On the few occasions you find yourself offline, how many photos, games, massive work files, and video projects do you need immediate offline access to? And what plans do you have if the dreaded hard drive failure hits you when you least expect it?

When it comes to choosing the right hard drive for your new laptop, performance is more important than the size of your storage. In 2024, we would argue there is no place for traditional hard drives, and your first task is to ensure that your new computer has a high-performance solid-state drive (SSD).

Power users will get by with 256 GB of laptop storage, while a high-performance laptop should offer at least 512 GB. These options will be perfect for the average user, and only those who work with large files, such as high-resolution images and videos, need to push for the more expensive 1TB SSD hard drive.

However, for most users, speed and performance are more important than size.

The Bottom Line

The most important consideration when purchasing a new laptop is less about the size of a hard drive and should be more about avoiding a single point of failure.

The best way to protect your important files is through your laptop’s SSD, cloud storage, and an external hard drive. This ensures that the files you can’t afford to lose or need immediate access are available in at least two locations.

The size of your laptop hard disk doesn’t matter in the age of cheap cloud storage. The bigger question is how many files you have and where you can access them.