Recording file size and disk space calculator
How big will tonight's multitrack be? And how much fits on the drive you brought?
Per track, per minute
–
Data rate, all tracks
–
Total for this recording
–
Hours that fit on the drive
–
How it works
bytes = sample rate × (bit depth ÷ 8) × tracks × seconds
One mono track at 48 kHz and 24 bits is 144,000 bytes a second, about 8.6 MB a minute. Thirty-two of those for two hours is about 66 GB. File headers add almost nothing.
Sizes here use decimal units (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes), the same way drive makers label capacity. Your computer may report the same drive as smaller because it counts in binary units.
Field notes
- Standard WAV files stop at 4 GB. A single interleaved file past that needs RF64 or BWF-64, or the recorder splits it. One mono track at 48/24 reaches 4 GB after about 8 hours, but a 32-channel interleaved file hits it in about 15 minutes.
- Leave headroom on the drive. Recording to a nearly full drive is asking for dropouts. Plan for the show plus a safety margin, and a second drive if it matters.
- Drive speed matters too. 64 tracks at 96/24 is about 18 MB/s, steady, for hours. That's easy for an SSD and risky for a slow USB stick.
- Higher sample rates double everything. 96 kHz is twice the space of 48 kHz for the same tracks.