SSD space management: 46gbs of effective space from a new macbook air "64gb"

[peapody]

Just quite surprised and then not at the same time that my 11.6 has just 46gbs after a fresh install of leopard. Can't fit anything on there! Haha. Looking at my migration assistant, I won't be able to transfer a lot of my applications over. Anyone who wants to do some video work, bootcamping, or photoshopping/editing shouldn't even look at a 64gb. An ultimate 11" seems to be a must for the harddrive space and the 4gb of ram.Just a cautionary tale for those people who are considering the baseline models!

No regrets though - just need to be more creative in harddrive management.

 

[Aboo]

Just quite surprised and then not at the same time that my 11.6 has just 46gbs after a fresh install of leopard. Can't fit anything on there! Haha. Looking at my migration assistant, I won't be able to transfer a lot of my applications over. Anyone who wants to do some video work, bootcamping, or photoshopping/editing shouldn't even look at a 64gb. An ultimate 11" seems to be a must for the harddrive space and the 4gb of ram.Just a cautionary tale for those people who are considering the baseline models!

No regrets though - just need to be more creative in harddrive management.

I do think your uber-small 32gb flash drive will help defray some of your hard drive space qualms though , especially since you can leave it plugged in.

 

[St. G]

Wait, you mean formatted size differs from claimed size and that the OS takes up some space? The hell you say!

 

[newdeal]

...

keep it on the network. regardless though if you used snow leopard instead of leopard I think the footprint is a bit smaller and of course you can ditch the extra language files and universal binaries by using something like cleanmymac to get some space back also

 

[peapody]

Wait, you mean formatted size differs from claimed size and that the OS takes up some space? The hell you say!

How cute. Love the sarcasm - but this isn't one of your noob posts of surprise - it is more like, "Damn, an almost 20gb decrease fresh out of the box with OSX? Didn't think it was going to be that bad"

@Aboo - I think I would have read up more on the capabilities of using a USB flash thatll sit in the port all day long. Don't know if there is anything I can do besides putting media on there. Need to see if I can run applications/an OS lol.

 

[OneMike]

How cute. Love the sarcasm - but this isn't one of your noob posts of surprise - it is more like, "Damn, an almost 20gb decrease fresh out of the box with OSX? Didn't think it was going to be that bad"

@Aboo - I think I would have read up more on the capabilities of using a USB flash thatll sit in the port all day long. Don't know if there is anything I can do besides putting media on there. Need to see if I can run applications/an OS lol.

I do agree with you and think it's a valid point. Did you do a minimal install, meaning not installing the other languages, and anything else other than what was required?

 

[Abyssgh0st]

Was it really that bad? I did a fresh install on mine and after installing quite a bit of software I have like 42GB free. If so that's a bummer, I'll check mine when I get home.

 

[peapody]

Was it really that bad? I did a fresh install on mine and after installing quite a bit of software I have like 42GB free. If so that's a bummer, I'll check mine when I get home.

Interesting. Would love to hear what you find. Perhaps because I didn't remove language packages etc...but I am not sure how to do that yet.

EDIT: Reading over a macrumors guide - I see that you can remove up to used 8gbs of space if you customize what you install. Removing printer drivers will remove 3.4gb and removing languages around 1.8gb. That seems to be a good amount to warrant a re-fresh install for me. That and I do not see myself using many of the programs I brought over with time machine from my macbook pro. No photoshopping or illustrating on this computer. Removing my apps will take me down to 40ish gbs of free space but then again, what would I fill that space with? My media libraries are too large. haha. Oh well. Fresh installing anyways. Will report back with what I get.

 

[bobjob186]

I'd go back and reinstall the OS and make sure not to check any of the languages or printer drivers. They take a lot of unwanted space. Monolingual also saved me about a gig of space as well. Now with about 30GB of music and 8GB of pictures and Office 2011 and iPhoto 11 I'm at 20GB left, which is pretty slim but I have everything I need for the machine on the machine now.

 

[peapody]

I'd go back and reinstall the OS and make sure not to check any of the languages or printer drivers. They take a lot of unwanted space. Monolingual also saved me about a gig of space as well. Now with about 30GB of music and 8GB of pictures and Office 2011 and iPhoto 11 I'm at 20GB left, which is pretty slim but I have everything I need for the machine on the machine now.

Interesting, I am doing the clean install right now and in my customizations window I am not allowed to uncheck "Essential System Software" which takes up 8.26gb and is the bulk of what is taking up space. There is no option to remove printer drivers.

Anyone else have this issue?

 

[iDave]

For a Macintosh, 64 GB of storage space really isn't very practical these days unless you're really good at keeping things to a minimum. It's nice to have this option at the low end though, for those who want to save a few bucks.

 

[kory108]

Interesting, I am doing the clean install right now and in my customizations window I am not allowed to uncheck "Essential System Software" which takes up 8.26gb and is the bulk of what is taking up space. There is no option to remove printer drivers.

Anyone else have this issue?

I ran into the same issue when attempting a clean install.

I just checked on my Air and it doesn't appear the Snow Leopard thumb drive installs printer drivers like the DVD does.

For the language issue, I used Monolingual after the install to remove any extra languages, and also the PPC part of any Universal applications. This saved me about 2.5 gigs.

 

[RaceTripper]

Your hibernate file is going to take up 4 GBs of your disk space. If you disable hibernate you could reclaim that space. If your battery dies, your MBA will shutoff without hibernating, but if that doesn't bother you...

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

 

[fyrefly]

You've probably already thought of this but iLife 11 takes up a fair bit of space. If you do a clean OSX only install (w/o extra languages, etc...) it should only take up ~10gb on your drive before any other installations.