Recording Time Calculator — Storage to Time Conversion

Using this calculator's formula at 48 kHz, 24-bit (data rate 144 kB/s per track) on a 1 TB drive (binary, 1024⁴ bytes — Windows would show this as 1,024 GB): mono ≈ 2,121 hours (88 days) with no reserve, or ≈ 1,696 hours with the default 20% reserve. Stereo ≈ 1,060 hours; 24 tracks ≈ 88 hours. A store-bought "1 TB" drive is decimal (10¹² bytes, the ~931 GB Windows reports), giving about 9% less: mono ≈ 1,929 hours with no reserve, or ≈ 1,543 hours with the 20% reserve. Storage is rarely the limit with modern drives — sustained disk throughput becomes the constraint for high track counts.

Recording Time (seconds) = Free Space (bytes) / Data Rate, where Data Rate = Sample Rate × Bytes per sample × Tracks. At 48 kHz, 24-bit (3 bytes per sample) across 24 tracks: 48,000 × 3 × 24 = 3,456,000 bytes/s. On 100 GB (binary, 100 × 1024³ = 107,374,182,400 bytes): 107,374,182,400 / 3,456,000 ≈ 31,069 seconds ≈ 518 minutes ≈ 8.6 hours (before any reserve). Using decimal 100 GB (1×10¹¹ bytes) gives ≈ 8.0 hours.

For small track counts (1-8 tracks at 48 kHz), a 7200 RPM hard drive is sufficient. For 16+ tracks at 96 kHz, an SSD is recommended for reliable sustained throughput. NVMe SSDs provide the fastest speeds but standard SATA SSDs are adequate for most recording scenarios.

Yes. Never fill a drive completely — performance degrades as drives fill up, especially HDDs. Keep at least 20% free space on HDDs and 10% on SSDs. Also budget extra for project files, bounces, and virtual instrument data beyond just the audio recording.