This is How Many Blu-Rays Fit On A 1,2,3,4,5 TB Hard Drive!
Blu-ray movies have one of the highest quality video formats and occupy a larger memory space than a standard DVD film on a hard drive.
Knowing how many Blu-rays can fit into your hard drive will enable you to organize and better structure your hard drive’s memory capacity.
Therefore, you may have been wondering how many Blu-rays can fit into 1, 2,3,4, or 5 terabytes worth of hard drive. You’re not the only one, so that isn’t surprising!
A standard Blu-ray disc contains 25GB per layer; therefore, 35-40 blu-ray discs will fit into a one-terabyte hard drive. 80 blu-ray discs will fit into two terabytes, 120 blu-ray discs within three terabytes, 160 blu-ray discs will fit comfortably into a four-terabyte hard drive, and 200 blu-ray discs will fit into a five-terabyte hard drive.
In this article, I will guide you through the different factors in determining the size of a Blu-ray disc and the number of Blu-ray discs that can fit into hard drives ranging from 1-5 terabytes.
How Many Blu-rays Fit on 1 TB Hard Drive?
35-40 single-layered (25GB) high definition blu-ray discs will fit into a one-terabyte hard drive.
While 20 double-layered (50GB) high definition blu-ray discs will fit into the same one-terabyte hard drive.
However, the resolution and quality of the movies you store on the hard drive matter greatly as it directly affects the memory space the movie will occupy.
A feature-length 4k film in Ultra HD Blu-ray quality with HDR can gulp up as much as 110 GB on your hard drive.
While lower, quality 1080 blu-ray movies mostly occupy between 25 to 30GB of memory space.
Similarly, you could opt for a ripped blu-ray copy of the movie. Ripped Blu-ray versions occupy less space.
However, at the risk of taking away a good chunk of quality and resolution from the movie.
Since 1080p blu-ray is the format most movies come in, you can safely allocate between 15 to 30GB of space for each disc in the hard drive.
Lower-quality DVD movies will take about seven or 8GB. Another option to maximize memory space in the hard drive is to compress the blu-ray file size.
Reducing the quality and resolution of a very high-quality blu-ray movie file to a much lower 1080p format will add more usable memory to the drive.
Although compressing the movie file will affect its quality, resolution, and sound, even cutting out some scenes from the movie, a compressed blu-ray file can reduce to as much as 4GB.
1 of the major components of a movie that affects its memory size is the length of the movie.
Sometimes you may be unable to fit the required 40 (single-layered) or 20 (double-layered) blu-ray files into a one-terabyte hard drive due to the varying lengths of the movie files.
Therefore, it could serve you well if you structure the movie files you store within your hard drive on a time limit that doesn’t exceed a certain duration.
You could fit 80 hours of single-layered blu-ray films or 40 hours of double-layered films into a one-terabyte hard drive so long as the movies do not exceed 120 minutes.
Below is a table that lists the film limit (for single-layered Blu-ray discs) in hours for each hard drive ranging from 1-5 terabytes:
| Hour Limit | Time Duration For Each Film | Hard Drive Memory |
|---|---|---|
| 80 hours | 120 minutes | 1 Terabyte |
| 160 hours | 120 minutes | 2 Terabytes |
| 240 hours | 120 minutes | 3 Terabytes |
| 320 hours | 120 minutes | 4 Terabytes |
| 400 hours | 120 minutes | 5 Terabytes |
How Many Movies Can a 2TB Hard Drive Hold?
80 standard (not pirated) blu-ray films can fit into a two-terabyte hard drive.
However, the figures are much higher for pirated movies. Pirated movies usually don’t come in very large file sizes.
And since they are compressed formats, a Blu-ray Rip 720p movie can take up 1GB of memory space in a hard drive.
At the same time, a Blu-ray 1080p Rip movie will take at least 3GB.
Below is a table that covers the amount and sizes of pirated Blu-ray, DVD, SD, and HD movie versions you can store in a two-terabyte hard drive:
| Movie Type & Resolution | Size | No. Of movies in a 2TB hard drive |
|---|---|---|
| Blu-ray Rip 1080p (Pirated) | 3-3.5 Gigabytes | 665 or 571 Movies |
| Blu-ray Rip 720p (Pirated) | 1 Gigabyte | 2000 movies |
| DVD Rip (Pirated) | 700 Megabytes | 2857 movies |
| Standard Definition (SD) movie from iTunes | 1.5 Gigabytes | 1333 movies |
| 1080p movie from iTunes | 5 Gigabytes | 400 movies |
| 720p movie from iTunes | 4 Gigabytes | 500 movies |
How Many Blu-rays Will Fit in 3TB Hard Drive?
120 standard (not pirated) Blu-ray films can fit into a 3 Terabytes hard drive.
Although, if you have movies stored in different formats on your hard drive, the number of movies it can contain will vary.
Again, the number of movies the hard drive can hold would depend on the film’s length and its different qualities.
Here are some quality three-terabyte hard drives you can check out.
Below is a table that lists the amount and sizes of pirated Blu-ray, DVD, SD, and HD movie versions you can store in a 3 Terabytes hard drive:
| Movie Type & Resolution | Size | No. Of movies in a 3 Terabytes hard drive |
|---|---|---|
| Blu-ray Rip 1080p (Pirated) | 3-3.5 Gigabytes | 1000 or 857 movies |
| Blu-ray Rip 720p (Pirated) | 1 Gigabyte | 3000 movies |
| DVD Rip (Pirated) | 700 Megabytes | 4285 movies |
| Standard Definition (SD) movie from iTunes | 1.5 Gigabytes | 2000 movies |
| 1080p movie from iTunes | 5 Gigabytes | 600 movies |
| 720p movie from iTunes | 4 Gigabytes | 750 movies |
How Many Blu-ray Movies Can I Store in 4TB Hard Drive?
160 standard (not pirated) Blu-ray movies can fit comfortably into a four-terabyte hard drive.
Check out any of these quality 4-terabyte hard drives. It is important to note that terabytes calculations differ among some device brands.
For example, a Windows laptop will read a 4-terabyte hard drive as having 3.63 terabytes. At the same time, an Apple Mac laptop displays it as four terabytes.
This difference between both device types does not affect the actual storage capacity of the hard drive, which still contains four terabytes of space.
Because most movies are either compressed or pirated versions, here is a table that lists the amount and sizes of different movie formats you can store in a 4 TB hard drive:
| Movie Type & Resolution | Size | No. Of movies in a four terabytes hard drive |
|---|---|---|
| Blu-ray Rip 1080p (Pirated) | 3-3.5 Gigabytes | 1333 or 1142 movies |
| Blu-ray Rip 720p (Pirated) | 1 Gigabyte | 4000 movies |
| DVD Rip (Pirated) | 700 megabytes | 5714 movies |
| Standard Definition (SD) movie from iTunes | 1.5 Gigabytes | 2666 movies |
| 1080p movie from iTunes | 5 Gigabytes | 800 movies |
| 720p movie from iTunes | 4 Gigabytes | 1000 movies |
How Many Blu-rays Will Fit on 5TB Hard Drive?
A 5 terabytes hard drive can contain up to 200 standard blu-ray disks.
However, the quality and different formats of the movies will determine how many of them can fit into the hard drive.
A 5 terabytes hard drive is very large. By estimate, it can hold a minimum of 1,250 feature-length movies and thousands of music files and digital photos.
You can check out any of these 5-terabyte hard drives. Like other hard drives, pirated blu-ray movie versions take up fewer spaces than standard Blu-ray movies.
Below is a table that contains the number and sizes of different movie formats you can store in five terabytes hard drive:
| Movie Type & Resolution | Size | No. Of movies in a five terabytes hard drive |
|---|---|---|
| Blu-ray Rip 1080p (Pirated) | 3-3.5 Gigabytes | 1,666 or 1428 movies |
| Blu-ray Rip 720p (Pirated) | 1 Gigabyte | 5000 movies |
| DVD Rip (Pirated) | 700 megabytes | 7142 movies |
| Standard Definition (SD) movie from iTunes | 1.5 Gigabytes | 3333 movies |
| 1080p movie from iTunes | 5 Gigabytes | 1000 movies |
| 720p movie from iTunes | 4 Gigabytes | 1250 movies |
Should I Use a Big Hard Drive or Multiple Small Hard Drives for Blu-ray Storage?
A big hard drive is more advantageous than many small hard drives. The best way to view this is by comparing their advantages and disadvantages.
So, below are some pros and cons of using one big hard drive compared to using multiple smaller ones for storing Blu-ray movies.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Ease of storage | Risk of losing entire data if the hard drive gets damaged or misplaced. |
| Less Cable management | |
| Less heat generated |
Here is a table displaying the pros and cons of using small hard drives for blu-ray storage.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Lowered risk of losing entire data | Increased heat generated |
| Multiple drive cables to manage | |
| Increased noise vibration |
Final Thoughts
The amount of blu-ray movies that can fit into any hard drive depends on the movie’s quality, resolution, and digital format.
Standard Blu-ray movies will occupy 25-50GB of space on a hard drive.
In contrast, pirated or compressed Blu-ray movie versions will occupy between 1-4GB of space on the same hard drive.
