This is the most important factor to consider when purchasing a new external hard drive. If you have a lot of data to store and backup then you will need a hard drive with enough storage space. If you have less data then you will need a much smaller drive. There is no reason to spend a lot of money on a drive if you are only going to use half of the space. There are many devices available for the transfer of digital media, but if you want to expand the space of a computer, it might be better to go with a flash drive. These drives are physically smaller than normal external hard drives but can hold just as much data. The largest of these drives can hold around 2TB (terabytes) of data, while the smallest can hold around 8GB of data. The smaller flash drives can be purchased for less than $20 dollars. The size of the drive is extremely important if you have large data files or a lot of data in general. Gaming systems use TB hard drives to ensure the proper storage of their gaming data because of how big the files are. If you are interested in storing large files and folders or run a small business, either a 1TB or 2TB drive should be plenty of space. If you are archiving your movie collection or just don’t want to run out of space, then you may need a hard drive with more terabytes.