Storage estimates

Flag: ⭐️ Modified: February 14, 2026 7:58 PM Created: September 17, 2025 3:27 PM Master Type: Notes Hide: No Starred: Yes Status: Unassigned

Yes, that helps a lot. Using your file sizes, here’s what the storage footprint looks like per item and at collection scale. I split it between what typically lives in the DAMS (TIFFs + JPGs) and what usually sits in your backup/originals storage (RAWs + PSDs), since you keep those outside the DAMS.

Per-item storage (using your sizes)

Per capture/view inputs

• RAW (Capture One original): ~150 MB each × ~3 = 450 MB per view
• PSD (processed master): 300–500 MB per view
• TIFF (delivery/preservation): 130–150 MB per output
• JPG (access): 5–7 MB per output

Scenarios

Notes:

• For negatives, you capture the negative (front/back). The positive files are derivatives, so they add TIFF/JPG but no extra RAWs, and typically no extra PSDs beyond the original captures.

What that means at collection scale

I ran two mix scenarios (you can swap in your own percentages if you prefer):

• Conservative mix: 60% negatives, 30% single-sided prints, 10% double-sided prints
• Aggressive mix: 70% negatives, 20% single-sided prints, 10% double-sided prints

Totals below are ranges (min–max), in terabytes.

75,000 items

• DAMS (TIFF+JPG): ~28.0–32.6 TB
• Backups (RAW+PSD): ~91.2–115.5 TB
• Combined: ~119–148 TB

100,000 items

• DAMS (TIFF+JPG): ~37.3–43.4 TB (conservative) / 41.2–47.9 TB (aggressive)
• Backups (RAW+PSD): ~121.6–154.0 TB (conservative) / 128.7–163.1 TB (aggressive)
• Combined: ~159–197 TB (conservative) / 170–211 TB (aggressive)

200,000 items

• DAMS (TIFF+JPG): ~74.7–86.8 TB (conservative) / 82.4–95.8 TB (aggressive)
• Backups (RAW+PSD): ~243.2–308.0 TB (conservative) / 257.5–326.2 TB (aggressive)
• Combined: ~318–395 TB (conservative) / 340–422 TB (aggressive)

Read on your 200 TB Google Workspace pool

• The DAMS portion for 100k items is ~37–48 TB.
• The RAW+PSD backups for 100k items are the bigger piece at ~122–163 TB.
• Combined at 100k items: roughly 160–210 TB depending on the mix and the exact PSD/JPG sizes.

Translation:

• A 200 TB pooled Google Workspace plan can accommodate ~100k items if the mix skews closer to the conservative side and you’re careful.
• If your mix is closer to aggressive, or if other museum storage keeps growing, you’ll be near or over the 200 TB ceiling around 100k–120k items.
• At 200k items you will exceed 200 TB by a wide margin, regardless.

What to adjust (if you want more headroom)

1. Keep JPGs out of cloud backups if the DAMS can generate them on demand. That only saves ~20–30 MB per negative item, so it’s small compared to RAW/PSD, but every bit helps.
2. Revisit PSD retention after QA sign-off (controversial). If you trust the TIFFs as preservation masters and can reconstruct a workflow, retiring PSDs yields big savings (300–500 MB per view).
3. Move RAW/PSD backups to cheaper object storage (Wasabi/Backblaze B2 with immutability) while keeping TIFFs in the DAMS. Your DAMS storage remains ~40–90 TB over time; your cheaper bucket carries the heavy RAW/PSD volume.
4. Dedicate Google Workspace to “living” collections work and collaboration, not long-term cold backup. Keep it responsive; push the bulk to object storage that scales cleanly.

Quick recommendations based on your setup

• DAMS (TIFF + derived JPG previews): Pics.io + Wasabi or DBGallery Cloud.
• Heavy backups (RAW + PSD): Wasabi or Backblaze B2 with Object Lock (immutability) + lifecycle rules.
• Workspace: Keep Google Drive for working documents, Airtable exports, and your active PSDs in progress, but plan to offload completed RAW/PSD sets to object storage once QC is finished.

If you want, I can plug your exact item counts and mix into a small calculator and hand you a one-pager that says: “At X items you’ll hit 200 TB on Google; here’s how much sits in DAMS vs backups; here’s what to move where.”

Here are three storage projections 📊 based on your file sizes:

1. DAMS only (TIFF + JPG) → Even at 200,000 items, you’re well under the 200 TB cap.
2. Backups only (RAW + PSD) → This grows much faster, getting close to the 200 TB cap at around 150,000–200,000 items.
3. Combined total (DAMS + Backups) → At the higher estimates, you’ll exceed 200 TB before hitting 200,000 items.

👉 This means Google Workspace’s pooled 200 TB could work for DAMS-only storage, but not if you also expect to keep all RAWs + PSDs there long-term. Would you like me to model what happens if you offload backups to Wasabi/Glacier and keep only DAMS derivatives (TIFF/JPG) in Google?

So I should consider storage backup separate from DAMS

I built the models and tables you asked for and displayed them as a downloadable table. Summary and interpretation below.

What I modelled

• Your curator’s rule: no digital positives for the backs of negatives. Negatives still get both front + back scanned as TIFFs, but we only create a positive TIFF (and JPG) for the front.
• Prints are treated as front-only in the DAMS (backs rarely scanned).
• File-size assumptions you gave (midpoints used where ranges existed):
  • RAW: 3 × 150 MB per view = 450 MB per view
  • PSD: 400 MB per view
  • TIFF: 140 MB
  • JPG: 6 MB
• For negatives: front and back scanned -> backups include RAW & PSD for both views; DAMS includes front negative TIFF, back negative TIFF, front positive TIFF, and a front JPG.
• For prints and ephemera: single view (front only).
• Mix scenarios modeled: Conservative (60% negatives / 35% prints / 5% ephemera), AggressiveNegatives (70/25/5), and PrintHeavy (50/45/5). I ran counts for 75k, 100k, 200k items (table shows first two mixes with 75k/100k/200k rows; aggressive includes sample rows).

Table (key columns shown)

You can download the full table from the Python output if you want. Columns include:

• Mix, Items, Counts (Negatives, Prints, Ephemera)
• DAMS_TB: TB needed for TIFF + JPG derivatives stored in DAMS
• Backups_TB: TB needed for RAW + PSD backups (working masters)
• Combined_TB: total TB
• Cost_All_Hot_$yr: Annual cost if everything (DAMS + backups) stored hot on Wasabi at $72/TB/yr
• Cost_All_Cold_$yr: Annual cost if DAMS on Wasabi and backups moved to Glacier at $12/TB/yr
• Cost_Hybrid20%Hot_$yr: Hybrid policy where 20% of backups remain hot (Wasabi) and remainder cold (Glacier)

Quick takeaways (from the table)

• For 100,000 items, Conservative mix:
  • DAMS ~30 TB; Backups ~130 TB; Combined ~160 TB.
  • Annual cost if All-Hot (Wasabi): ~$11,494/yr.
  • All-Cold (DAMS hot on Wasabi + backups Glacier): ~$3,712/yr.
  • Hybrid (20% hot backups): ~$5,269/yr.
• For 200,000 items, Conservative mix: Combined ~319 TB — you’ll exceed a 200 TB Google pool and should offload backups to cold storage or alternate provider.
• The hybrid approach typically gives the best balance: low cost with reasonable access for recent captures.

Next steps I can do right away

Pick one and I’ll produce it:

1. Export the full table to CSV or Excel for your records and to share with your boss.
2. Regenerate the table with your exact PSD size (300 vs 500) or different RAW counts (if sometimes fewer than 3).
3. Produce charts (TB vs items, and annual cost vs items) for one or more mixes so you can include visuals in a presentation.
4. Draft the lifecycle policy text to match the hybrid option you prefer (e.g., 12-month hot window, then cold archive with manifest and SLA).

Which of those would you like next?