The sheer weight of data is growing far too fast for personal storage devices to cope, says new research which will delight device makers and disappoint cloud storage providers, if true. The study suggests that the majority of consumers are stressed by the prospect of deleting their content to overcome capacity issues. The only way to cope with the newly identified syndrome, Post Deletion Stress Disorder (PDSD), is to buy more capacity. However, they want to own the device that stores their data, rather than rent it, says Western Digital.

According to the independent study conducted on storage device maker WD’s behalf, 56% of UK consumers have been forced to delete content from a technology device, due to capacity issues, and regretted it. Researcher Vanson Bourne, which talked to 1,000 UK consumers, found that 7% are running out of storage on their mobile daily, 16% are reaching full memory at least weekly and 31% run out of storage capacity at least monthly.

However, given a choice, consumers generally prefer to own storage outright, rather than rent it, it claimed. Meanwhile storage allocations on devices are being pushed with 77% downloading an app to a mobile device at least monthly, and around one third (33%) downloading a feature film to a mobile device this often. Photographs take up the most storage capacity across a range of consumer devices, while 44% of consumers admit they ‘don’t know’ what content is taking up storage capacity on their devices.

With 44% of the survey sample trying to manage on just 64GB of device storage not enough people (just 33%) have invested in an external hard drive to solve their storage problems, says WD a maker of external hard drives. By contrast, just 2% of those surveyed use a paid cloud storage service and only 16% use a free cloud storage service.

“Clearly consumers are sacrificing precious memories and valuable content to make more space on their devices,” said Jim Welsh, general manager of Content Solutions at WD, “we believe consumers will look for external storage solutions that bring more value with features that help them store, share and backup their digital content from mobile devices and computers.”