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Am I a complete idiot for thinking about upgrading 256GB SSD MBA to 512GB for $600?

W

watermelonbook

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 31, 2014
173
38
Am I a complete idiot for thinking about upgrading
256GB SSD MBA to 512GB for $600? (price for the
512GB SSD module on iFixit)
 
Yes... get an external HD enclosure, pop in a SSD for 25% of the price upgrade.
 
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Agree with the suggestions on the external HDD. I'd bet that there's a reasonable chance that you could sell your existing machine and buy a 2014 refurb with a 512GB SSD for less than $600 and you'd have a one year warranty on the whole machine.
 
I'm not sure why these comments are suggesting you may be wrong for doing what you prefer but:

It's your money. Spend it how you like. If you like to store all of your data internally and that will make you happy, money well spent in my book.
 
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If you just need some more space (not the whole extra 256gb) you could also pop in a mini usb stick. For example, SanDisk makes one tiny 128Gb USB 3.0 stick - it costs less than 100$.
 
I would not spend that kind of money to upgrade a 2013 machine. If you really need a bigger SSD, I like newellj's suggestion to sell it and buy another machine that already has 512gb. That would also give you the opportunity to upgrade to 8gb RAM and the i7. And you would also get a 12 month warranty.

Refurb 2013 11" i7/8gb/512gb is $1269, the 13" is $1359

http://store.apple.com/us/product/G...nch-macbook-air-17ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i7
http://store.apple.com/us/product/G...nch-macbook-air-17ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i7

My 2013 11" i7/8gb/512gb just had its second birthday and I still love this machine. Will be keeping it for several more years. :)
 
That's a lot of money to put into any computer that's not new.

But if the money isn't being taken from some necessity, I'd definitely upgrade my 2014 MBP to 512gigs.
 
Depends on your needs. If you need storage on the go, then go for it. If you want it just for convenience and you have the money, then go for it. When buying, go for the best model that you could afford, don't hold back unless you'll go bankrupt because in the end you'll reap the benefits.

BUT if you don't have the money and you just want it (not need), then just buy additional storage via external hard drives/cloud drives instead.

You're not stupid for considering, you're actually being smart bec. you're thinking about what would best suit you and your needs.
 
If I were you I would use a flash drive if I could and then fully upgrade to a new MBA later (or other Apple-related product).
 
You won't make the cut for a Darwin Award nomination (given the abundance of immense talent frequenting MR). But you'll get an honorable mention!
 
joningi said:
If you just need some more space (not the whole extra 256gb) you could also pop in a mini usb stick. For example, SanDisk makes one tiny 128Gb USB 3.0 stick - it costs less than 100$.
Click to expand...

QUMAX 128 GB card is £28.99 at Amazon. Not the fastest, sticks out a bit, but perfect for adding storage or for backup.
 
I'm going to be a contrarian on this one.

$600 is quite steep, but your 256GB SSD is worth something. Maybe you could get $200 for it. That brings it down to $400, which is a little more wallet-friendly.

I am in nearly the same boat with both mine and my wife's computers. We both have 256GB SSDs that are running nearly full. This is after using the SD slot with 64GB cards to store our iTunes libaries. The culprit is years and years of photos in our iPhoto library. Mine's about 160GB and my wife's is 200GB.

I would love to swap our 256GB SSDs and pop in 512GB. I hate external drives and I like to have everything on my internal. Stuff like iMovie projects and movie/video files, I keep on an external. But I like to have my photos available all the time.

Since I don't have $1000 to spend on two 512GB drives, I'm going to pare down our iPhoto libraries and archive them onto external drives and bluray discs.

Also, I've seen 512GB samsung SSDs for Macbooks on eBay for less than $600. Closer to $450.

ft
 
krishmk said:
Yes... get an external HD enclosure, pop in a SSD for 25% of the price upgrade.
Click to expand...

This is what my suggestion would be as well. I've got an SSD in a USB3 enclosure (formatted ExFAT) and it performs quite well. The Black Magic disk speed test says the internal device does 710 MB/s write and 722 MB/s read, and says the external does 417 MB/s write and 411 MB/s read. More than sufficient performance for running VMs, so it should be good for everything else.
 
For use at home, you might look into a network solution, like a NAS or even something as simple as file sharing running on an older machine. The 2013 MBA has 802.11ac wifi which is pretty respectable if you have a compatible router. Here are my results with a 2013 MBA connecting via wifi to an Airport Time Capsule and a 2012 Mini running file sharing. This should be much faster than USB flash drives and about twice the speed of a USB 2.0 external drive.

wifi-mini.png
 
ftaok said:
...
I am in nearly the same boat with both mine and my wife's computers. We both have 256GB SSDs that are running nearly full. This is after using the SD slot with 64GB cards to store our iTunes libaries. The culprit is years and years of photos in our iPhoto library. Mine's about 160GB and my wife's is 200GB.

I would love to swap our 256GB SSDs and pop in 512GB. I hate external drives and I like to have everything on my internal. Stuff like iMovie projects and movie/video files, I keep on an external. But I like to have my photos available all the time.

Since I don't have $1000 to spend on two 512GB drives, I'm going to pare down our iPhoto libraries and archive them onto external drives and bluray discs.
...
Click to expand...

I doubt bluray discs would be good for this purpose. They only hold 25GB (it sounds like you have much more than this in photos), plus they take forever to burn, plus burnable optical media is notorious for degrading over the course of several years.

Probably much better to get a few small 2.5" external USB hard drives and duplicating your photos onto those and keeping them in different physical locations.

As for reluctance to move things to external drives, I understand that it's nice to have all your photos in one place but you can do the mental math at how often you look at said photos.

Personally I keep all my photos (except the ones for the current year) on an external drive that I don't usually take with me when I'm traveling. I can count the number of times I wanted to look at a particular photo but didn't have it available on one hand. But YMMV of course.
 
motrek said:
I doubt bluray discs would be good for this purpose. They only hold 25GB (it sounds like you have much more than this in photos), plus they take forever to burn, plus burnable optical media is notorious for degrading over the course of several years.

Probably much better to get a few small 2.5" external USB hard drives and duplicating your photos onto those and keeping them in different physical locations.

As for reluctance to move things to external drives, I understand that it's nice to have all your photos in one place but you can do the mental math at how often you look at said photos.

Personally I keep all my photos (except the ones for the current year) on an external drive that I don't usually take with me when I'm traveling. I can count the number of times I wanted to look at a particular photo but didn't have it available on one hand. But YMMV of course.
Click to expand...
I agree with your points. The way I'm planning on archiving my iPhoto library would be to duplicate my current library several times and having them separated by years or groups of years.

For instance, I'll have an iPhoto library just containing 2001-2006, then another one for 2007-2008, then 2009 on will have their own library.

I'll store them on external HDs, plus burn a copy of each library on BD and store them in a fireproof safe.

I'm also thinking about grabbing every single original JPG out of my library and throwing them into another archive, separated by years, just in case future software can't read an iPhoto library (or open an OS X package).

Ultimately, I'm going to migrate to Photos.app, but I think I want to start fresh ... and for that, I have to clear up SSD space on my MBA.

RANT - Apple could make this so much easier if they had an archive feature in iPhoto/Photos where the library would keep thumbnails of all photos, but you could archive chunks of your library onto external media. That way, you would still have access to all of your photos, but if you chose a photo that's archived, it would prompt you to connect that particular drive (or optical disc). I think older versions of iPhoto had the ability to archive to DVD in a similar sort of way. But I guess Apple is really pushing people to use iCloud as a means to store/archive their photos ... but I'm cheap and not really interested in spending $20/month indefinitely for what could be done locally. RANT OVER
 
ftaok said:
...
RANT - Apple could make this so much easier if they had an archive feature in iPhoto/Photos where the library would keep thumbnails of all photos, but you could archive chunks of your library onto external media. That way, you would still have access to all of your photos, but if you chose a photo that's archived, it would prompt you to connect that particular drive (or optical disc). I think older versions of iPhoto had the ability to archive to DVD in a similar sort of way. But I guess Apple is really pushing people to use iCloud as a means to store/archive their photos ... but I'm cheap and not really interested in spending $20/month indefinitely for what could be done locally. RANT OVER
Click to expand...

Dunno, usually I just organize my photos into folders using Finder. I have tried to use photo management software a few times and I guess it's sometimes nice to be able to tag things in photos or add notes to them but ultimately I find working with them in Finder to be easier.
 
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