Maximum Storage Capacity of Laptops in 2024

We’ve talked about storage types in our previous post shown here which is important when you want to consider data reading & writing speeds but we never mentioned how MUCH data you can STORE on a laptop with a given storage type.

Long story short, most laptops can support at least 2TB (as long as they are upgradeable). If a laptop is NOT upgradeable, you can find whether your storage is upgradeable here, then youll be stuck with whatever youve got at the time of purchase.

Below an overview of this post and how much storage on average each type of laptop can support:

The storage capacity will basically depend on the laptop size and motherboard which is related to the laptops type. In other words, whether its an small laptop for basic tasks, a thin laptop for traveling, a gaming laptop or a thick large workstation laptop, etc.

A. Budget Laptops

B. Ultrabooks and Thin-and-Light Laptops

Ultrabooks prioritize portability and battery life, which limits their internal space for storage. They ALWAYS come with an SSD because it saves both energy and space. On average they come with 512GB but the most expensive ones can be configured , before purchase, to have 2TB.

• Max Capacity: Most ultrabooks come with the option to choose between 256-2TB. An example is the latest MacBook Air M3 which supports up to 2TB. Because of the small and thin design, upgrading an ultrabooks storage is extremely difficult and not recommended. On average however maximum storage found on the latest ultrabook is 1TB.

C. Gaming Laptops

Gaming laptops will usually have way more storage capacities because games today can take  up tens of gigabytes and the best titles usually take around 100GB. Unlike, ultrabooks, they support both 2.5 inch SSDs which are cheaper. The maximum storage capacity will depend on the gaming laptop but 2TB is common for gaming laptops around 600 to 900 dollars and 8TB is common for high end gaming laptops.

For example, the MSI Katana A15, according to its specifications sheet shown here, being somewhat of a mid range gaming laptop well above 900 dollars, can support x2 Storage Drives of the M.2 Type. Each slot can support a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD which makes it a total of 4TB.

D. Workstation Laptops

Workstation laptops are designed for engineers or content creators, which means they must handle a large number of files or files that weight a ton. These have the maximum storage capacity amogn all types of all laptops. Its very common for a workstation laptop to support 8GB! On average however they can support 4TB through TWO storage drives one M.2 NVMe SSD and either an additional 2.5″ SATA SSD or another M.2 NVMe SSD.

For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Workstation supports 8TB through TWO storage slots which each supports a maximum of 4TB as states in the specifications sheet.

E. Chromebooks and Cheap  Laptops

Last but not least the laptops with the lowest storage capacities are those usually below 300 dollars. They are almost guaranteed to have a downgraded version of Windows or Chrome OS (ChroomeBooks). Due to the lack of storage, they rely most on cloud storage services to save documents.

Though most chromebooks will come with 32 GB to 64 GB.

The cheap windows laptops will have anywhere from 32GB to 128GB and RARELY 256GB.

What determines a laptops maximum storage capacity?

The most obvious reason is the laptop’s motherboard which dictates how many SLOTS there are available to place your storage as shown below:

Storage Type vs Capacity 

The storage capacity of a laptop is ALSO influenced by the type of storage used. The two main types of storage in modern laptops are Solid-State Drives (SSD) and Hard Disk Drives (HDD). Some laptops use eMMC storage which we went over and only have 32 to 64GB. Solid State Drives can have anywhere from 128GB to 4TB and the latest models support 8TB but whether you can use the latest on a single SSD slot (see picture above) is entirely up to your laptop’s motherboard.