Estimate storage by multiplying users by data per user by time:
Example: Twitter-like system
- million users
- Average user: tweets lifetime
- Average tweet: bytes (text + metadata)
Tweet storage: M bytes = TB
Media storage: If % of tweets have images ( KB average): M KB = PB
Growth: Multiply by expected years. years = x storage.
Media dominates storage. Text is almost negligible compared to images and videos.