Disk space – no matter which type of Web Hosting account you may have, you most likely have a limited amount of disk space. The disk space that you have is used when you upload files to your website. This would include all HTML files, scripts, videos, audios, graphics, and even stored email. Typically, the more you pay for your Web Hosting account, the more disk space and bandwidth you will have.

How Much Disk Space Will You Need?

If you own a personal website that has nothing more than text HTML pages, with few graphics, a Web Hosting account that has as little as 1MB or less of disk space will usually be just fine. However, as you continue to build on that website, including more HTML files and multi-media, you will need more space. In the grand scheme of things, unless your website will be completely textual, 1MB of disk space is not a great deal of space.

If you use too much disk space, your Web Hosting Company will typically have a policy about what will happen. Some will charge you for the extra space used, after the fact, while others simply will not allow you to exceed the disk space, requiring an upgrade to be paid for in advance. Unfortunately, if your Web Hosting Company allows you to exceed your disk space, without an upgrade, the amount that you will be charged for the extra usage will most likely be fairly high.

Calculating Disk Space

You can usually see how much disk space has been used in the control panel of your Web Hosting account. Control Panels will typically tell you – in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes – how much space has been used, as well as the percentage of your allotted space that you have used. If for some reason your control panel does not give you this information, you can easily determine how much disk space you have used by adding up the size of the files that you have uploaded. This is easily done by putting all of those files into one folder, and checking the properties of that folder on your computer.

The average webpage usually has about 3 – 4 graphics, and text that covers about 1.5 to 2 computer screen lengths. This could translate to about 20kb, and possibly more or less, depending on the size of the graphics files that you used. If each page is about 20kb in size, and you have a 10MB Web Hosting account, you could have approximately 500 webpages on that site before you exceeded your disk space.

Database

If your Web Hosting account allows for databases, these may or may not be calculated into the amount of disk space that you have used. This varies from one host to the next, and you will need to find this information out from your particular Web Host provider.

One thing that many people try to do to decrease the amount of disk space that they use on their paid hosting account is to keep larger files, such as videos, audio, etc., on free Web Hosting accounts. Beware, however, as most free hosting accounts do not allow this, and will ban you if you break their rules. Also note that your visitors will be able to see where the files are hosted.

The best thing you can do, when selecting a hosting account in terms of disk space, is to first calculate how much disk space you need, based on the combined file sizes, and then upgrade later, as needed.

However, you may not even need to worry about this, as some Web Hosts only offer one hosting package, so you won’t need to make a choice in regard to disk space. However, HostGator offers several options to suit your needs.