MacBook Pro Retina 128GB or 256GB

Deep12 said:

Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

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256GB.

The 128GB is too small and its performance is pathetic compared to the 256GB.

That said, I've replied to your other thread and you should be considering a 15", since you're doing electrical/computer engineering with AutoCAD and an IDE.

Deep12 said:

Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Click to expand...

256 GB, like I said on the other thread.

It's entirely possible to squeeze a Windows VM or a Bootcamp partition on the 128GB SSD, plus a few HD movies, several gigabytes of music, three or four large apps and that's about it. Consider yourself warned

Deep12 said:

Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Click to expand...

With bootcamp or VM I always recommend more storage because they eat GB's for breakfast.

As for photos, music, that depends on how much you have and if you want it with you at all times. I prefer to store that on external storage but that's just my way of doing things.

yjchua95 said:

256GB.

The 128GB is too small and its performance is pathetic compared to the 256GB.

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Do larger SSD's have better performance?

Z3man said:

Do larger SSD's have better performance?

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In some cases, yes.

I have a 256 and after OS X installation, there is 218GB available.

Z3man said:

Do larger SSD's have better performance?

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In terms of the performance, you'll get around 300MB/s from the 128GB version i can sometime get 330MB/s (black magic stress tester, not real world) where as on the larger versions (256) its approaching double that (530MB/s) in my experience. My latest 512GB runs around 700MB/s. I have a theory as to why - the number of paths/chips within the device. But i'd certainly agree there is a performance difference. Will you notice it? depends, if you have loads or RAM and don't process large files - probably not. All depends on what your are doing.

Size question - i use external NAS storage for everything, so i still have around 90GB left on the 128GB version.

AFEPPL said:

In terms of the performance, you'll get around 300MB/s from the 128GB version i can sometime get 330MB/s (black magic stress tester, not real world) where as on the larger versions (256) its approaching double that (530MB/s) in my experience. My latest 512GB runs around 700MB/s. I have a theory as to why - the number of paths/chips within the device. But i'd certainly agree there is a performance difference. Will you notice it? depends, if you have loads or RAM and don't process large files - probably not. All depends on what your are doing.

Size question - i use external NAS storage for everything, so i still have around 90GB left on the 128GB version.

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My 256GB clocks in at 680MB/s writes and 720MB/s reads.

Your results look like you got a SanDisk variant, which perform slower than Samsung in writes.

I've the Samsung variant.

Meanwhile my 1TB reaches over 1000MB/s in both operations.

yjchua95 said:

My 256GB clocks in at 680MB/s writes and 720MB/s reads.

Your results look like you got a SanDisk variant, which perform slower than Samsung in writes.

I've the Samsung variant.

Meanwhile my 1TB reaches over 1000MB/s in both operations.

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My 512 GB is only slightly faster than your 256. Where did you get such a fast 1 TB?

redheeler said:

My 512 GB is only slightly faster than your 256. Where did you get such a fast 1 TB?

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The 1TB drive in my 2014 13" clocks about 980 read and write in blackmagic.

Deep12 said:

Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD.

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I think you'll be finding the 128GB to be too small, and you'll have painted yourself in the corner. Go for the 256

yjchua95 said:

My 256GB clocks in at 680MB/s writes and 720MB/s reads.

Your results look like you got a SanDisk variant, which perform slower than Samsung in writes.

I've the Samsung variant.

Meanwhile my 1TB reaches over 1000MB/s in both operations.

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You are correct, the device is a SD0256F, i was talking about writes though - not reads. Reads are around 711 peak, but are around 670/90 mostly. saying that its just run a 724!!!

Best I saw on the 128 over a 1min cycle was 321/MB write, 448/MB read
The 512 device was 715/MB write and 805/MB these device are both samsung.

So, yeah, theres a measurable synthetic difference between the sizes.

redheeler said:

My 512 GB is only slightly faster than your 256. Where did you get such a fast 1 TB?

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The 1TBs are 4-lane PCIe, all other capacities are only 2-lane.

I was lucky to get a Samsung SM0256F, which performs far faster than the SanDisk SD0256F.

256 with what you are looking to do.

I would recommend getting at least 256 GB of storage, since it's considered a non-servicable component in the MacBook Pro with Retina display you'd be better off having more storage rather than running out of room a few months down the road and having to deal with external disks.

Just my two cents.

I love the 128GB option for a secondary machine. If I had an iMac for the horsepower and storage and an MBA for on the go, I probably wouldn't need more than 128GB on the latter. Heck, I'm barely getting the 16GB on my iPad and iPhone full.

A friend of mine bought his first Mac last fall and despite everyone's advice went with the 128GB. He calculated his SSD needs and - as he is an avid photographer - came up with an enormous amount, way past even the top tier 512GB option.
With this in mind, he decided to rather constantly hook up a 1TB external drive for his Lightroom and iTunes libraries and save some money by only buying 128GB internal storage. Mind you, this works for him, because he doesn't use a lot of different software and the data that's eating up his storage can easily be stored and used via an external drive.

I can't imagine any scenarios other than these two, in which 128GB would be sufficient. Myself, I'm struggling with 256GB on my main machine.

AFEPPL said:

You are correct, the device is a SD0256F, i was talking about writes though - not reads. Reads are around 711 peak, but are around 670/90 mostly. saying that its just run a 724!!!

Best I saw on the 128 over a 1min cycle was 321/MB write, 448/MB read
The 512 device was 715/MB write and 805/MB these device are both samsung.

So, yeah, theres a measurable synthetic difference between the sizes.

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My 13" rMBP with 256 GB SM0256F SSD scores around 675 MB/s for writes and 725 MB/s for reads. That write speed you mentioned with the Sandisk is quite a disappointment.

Day to day, you don't notice much difference between the 3, the 8GB/128 version is slower, but unless you are doing something large files they all work fine.

redheeler said:

My 13" rMBP with 256 GB SM0256F SSD scores around 675 MB/s for writes and 725 MB/s for reads. That write speed you mentioned with the Sandisk is quite a disappointment.

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My 21.5" iMac also got a SM0256F. Lucky me.

Same speeds as yours.

redheeler said:

256 GB, like I said on the other thread.

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256 GB is minimum in my opinion. You'll likely find you'll enjoy it so much it's easy to push the limits of a 256.

AFEPPL said:

Day to day, you don't notice much difference between the 3, the 8GB/128 version is slower, but unless you are doing something large files they all work fine.

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Performance perhaps, but storage needs, the 128GB can and will be getting tight imo.

So which is better out of a 256 or 512 balancing cost and storage. Is 256 really enough?

Samtb said:

So which is better out of a 256 or 512 balancing cost and storage. Is 256 really enough?

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Depends. I'd go for the 512GB for the peace of mind.