I’ve come to realize that the problem with PC storage isn’t capacity — it’s scalability. While even a small 250GB drive has its uses, nothing stops you from buying an 8TB SSD. Sure, it’ll cost a fortune, but the option is there. Most people, however, don’t buy 8TB right from the start. For them, solving the storage problem used to be simple: no space, buy more storage. That still works, but only up to a point. The annoying part isn’t finding more terabytes anymore. It’s making sure your PC is actually ready for them.
Capacity is no longer the hard part
Storage has never been bigger, faster, or easier to buy — with the important caveat that prices are extremely high right now. You can get multi-terabyte SSDs that fit into a tiny M.2 slot, as well as enormous HDDs built for bulk storage. External drives and flash drives add even more options. For most people, the limit isn’t whether enough storage exists, because it very much does.
That’s what makes the whole situation so frustrating. Running out of space feels like the easiest PC problem to fix — just buy more storage, install it, and move on. But you can’t always scale your storage the way you’d want to. Your PC may set a hard limit on how much storage you can add, and that limit has nothing to do with drive capacity.
Source: Your Motherboard May Cap How Much Storage You Can Actually Add