Since the mid 1990s I've carefully tracked content on whitehouse.gov. David Lytel, founder of the site, started putting up audio and then video content way back then (inspired in part by Vincent Voice Library work we did in 1992).

Obviously graphic and video content takes 100 times more space than text. I used Offline Explorer to download whitehouse.gov before the new administration took office this year. It was several gigabytes in size. If it had been text-only, it would've been a few meg in size.

Without trying to delve into what motivates your question, I can safely say: the cost of the disk storage for a text-centric site is neglibile -- pennies per year. If your site archives video, the cost becomes many times more -- but unless it is full-frame, full-motion high def, the cost of the storage is still very small.

Measuring the cost or the value of a Web site by the amount of disk space is silly. The entire content of www.msu.edu is a few hundred pages and may be less than 1G. The value comes in the work to create it: design, information architecture, message, graohics, accessibility, etc.

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Harper, Chris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Looking for some quick data on folks' web server disk usage for their web
initiatives. If at all possible, could I get a few replies with some stats
on your current disk space usage for your larger college or departmental web
sites?

Just provide URL and total disk space usage if you could.

For example:

news.msu.edu 5,055 MB
ur.msu.edu 293 MB
shop.msu.edu 363 MB

Thanks all for your help ahead of time!

Christopher M. Harper
MANAGER OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
University Relations, Michigan State University
401 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824-1047
Email: [log in to unmask] / Direct: (517) 355-9980
Web: http://ur.msu.edu / Cell: (517) 290-5496