Work out how much cloud storage a household needs once photos, documents and device backups are added up.
Household cloud needs are dominated by media rather than documents. Phone photos average around 3.5 MB each, home video runs about 7.5 GB per hour at 1080p, and each device's system backup typically occupies around 30 GB. Adding a year of growth and a 25% headroom margin is what stops a plan from filling up months after you buy it, because running out of cloud space silently breaks automatic backups.
Household storage requirement
Content GB = photos x 3.5 MB / 1024 + video hours x 7.5 GB + documents GB + devices x 30 GB; plan = (content + yearly growth) x 1.25
Most households with a large photo library and a few device backups land between 500 GB and 2 TB. Video is the swing factor — forty hours of 1080p footage alone is around 300 GB.
Because a full cloud account stops backing up, usually silently. A quarter of headroom plus a year of growth keeps automatic backups working until the next renewal.
It is one copy. The common 3-2-1 guidance is three copies on two media with one off-site, so pairing cloud with a local drive is more robust than either alone.