Analysis of faults and disturbances play crucial roles in secure and reliable electrical power supply. Digital fault recorders (DFR) enable digital recording of the power systems transient events with high quality and huge quantity. However, transformation of data to information, expectedly in an automated way, is a big challenge for the power utilities worldwide. This is a key focus for realizing the ‘Smart Grid’. In this paper, the architecture and specifications for the primary and the secondary information for the automated systems are described. This provides qualitative and quantitative guidelines about the information to derive out of the disturbance data. A quantified estimate of big data for the substations, has been estimated in the paper. Possible ways of reducing the big data by utilizing intelligent segmentation techniques are described, substantiated by real example. Utilization of centralized protection and remote disturbance analysis for reducing big disturbance data are also discussed.