Hosting media - bandwidth queries

[JEB]

I've a Joomla site and I want to host some movie and mp3 files on it. Movie files will typically be about 40mb, and mp3 about 500k. The site is not live yet, and I've no idea how many users it's going to attract, so am struggling to work out what monthly allocation I'll need from a hosting company for bandwidth.

Has anyone got such a site where they host their own files and they can give me a rough idea of their sites usage and the bandwidth they use each month.

I've looked at free hosting, but most of them delete the files if they are not used after a certain time, which will give me aissues. I've also had problems getting a Joomla bot or component that will properly handle linking to external files. If anyone has any ideas on good free hosting for media, or ways to handle the playing of the files, their advice would be much apreciated.

 

[Beansprout]

My Twobeds uploader has around 5Gb of content with nearly 600 active users and hits around 60Gb/mo. So probably not a lot - but most files are small and so it depends - it's just a case of multiplying expected visitors by average filesize and adding on a bit to be sure.

The safest bet is to start off with a cheaper account then upgrade as you go - most decent companies will allow this

 

[uk_viper]

like you said your not sure how much bandwidth its going to require since you dont know yet how busy its going to get, it might be an idea to start of with a shared package and then as the traffic grows you may be able to ask your host to increase your bandwidth or move your site to your own vps or dedicated server, but you cant be sure until you know how busy your site is going to get, best idea would be to watch your traffic over the first few months and see how busy it gets