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Dween

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 7, 2012
31
0
London, UK
I want to get the new MBA, but am concerned about the ssd sizes (and prices!)

How big of a drive would you ideally need to dual boot? On my iMac 2011 I have enough space to do so comfortably. Would 128GB be enough to run win7 and os x?

I feel 256GB to be the minimum and shared equally, but cannot afford to drop so much more cash!

Anybody else got bootcamp set up on the MBA and felt ok with the space?

Thanks!
 
I want to get the new MBA, but am concerned about the ssd sizes (and prices!)

How big of a drive would you ideally need to dual boot? On my iMac 2011 I have enough space to do so comfortably. Would 128GB be enough to run win7 and os x?

I feel 256GB to be the minimum and shared equally, but cannot afford to drop so much more cash!

Anybody else got bootcamp set up on the MBA and felt ok with the space?

Thanks!

That question is impossible to answer. It depends on what applications you're planning to run on the two operating systems.
 
I want to get the new MBA, but am concerned about the ssd sizes (and prices!)

How big of a drive would you ideally need to dual boot? On my iMac 2011 I have enough space to do so comfortably. Would 128GB be enough to run win7 and os x?

I feel 256GB to be the minimum and shared equally, but cannot afford to drop so much more cash!

Anybody else got bootcamp set up on the MBA and felt ok with the space?

Thanks!

Well for me at least I'm planning on splitting it about 33-67 between OS X and Windows 7 with a 128gb SSD. I don't need that much space on OS X but Windows will have all of my games. I'll be keeping most of my media besides songs on a NAS though.
 
I really want to get the 11" 64GB ssd but it would pretty much be impossible to boot camp wouldn't it?
I have a 27" iMac with 2gb ram for actual gaming and stuff. So I am kinda torn, I'd like to be able to play games in my air but I mainly want it for traveling to university and taking notes and doing work there.

So really the 64gb would be best right?

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk
 
I have a 2011 MBA with a 128GB drive. I found it to be too small realistically for Bootcamp. It can be done of course but I think I gave Win7 a 40GB partition and it just wasn't much room for anything.

I just bought a 2012 MBA with a 256GB SSD and it's much better for sizing. I gave Win7 a 60GB partition and it seems to be enough space and still leaves lots of room on the OSX partition. I probably should have went 80GB on Windows but we'll see how it works out.

If you can swing it, spend the extra bucks for the 256GB SSD. Much more usable. Cheers!

J.
 
I'm in the same boat on this one. I know 256gb would be better for using Parallels & Windows, but 128gb saves $300.
 
Is the MBA able to boot Windows from an external hard drive? Or just from the internal one?

Pretty sure there's no way to run bootcamp from an external drive. But you could run Parallels from an External Drive, and with USB 3.0 it should even be pretty snappy. I'm going to test it out when my Air arrives and see how well it runs before committing to a Bootcamp partition, even though I'm getting a 256GB SSD. I use windows so infrequently that it's probably easier to have it on an external drive if it runs fast enough.
 
How easy/hard is it to remove a Boot Camp or VM partition and reassign it back to the main OS X drive? I'm asking as I'm interested in making a partition (first time Mac owner) but I don't want to restrict my drive too much and if it's not reversible, I definitely won't do it.
 
How easy/hard is it to remove a Boot Camp or VM partition and reassign it back to the main OS X drive? I'm asking as I'm interested in making a partition (first time Mac owner) but I don't want to restrict my drive too much and if it's not reversible, I definitely won't do it.

A vm partition is only a file. Drag it to the trash and it is gone. I've never used boot camp so I can't say if there is a partition removal option.
 
The 256 GB SSD is absolutely essential. I have a MacBook with a 250 GB HDD and it's a tight fit. I have 90 GB allocated for OS X and 160 GB for Windows, with about 5 GB available space on both sides.

I'm planning on buying an Air in the near future, and I know that the 128 GB cannot possibly meet my needs. That said, the SSD is the only user serviceable part of the Air so if you want to upgrade later on you will probably* be able to do so.

*There are plenty of aftermarket SSDs for previous models, but there aren't any currently available for the 2012 model because it has a different connector.
 
How easy/hard is it to remove a Boot Camp or VM partition and reassign it back to the main OS X drive? I'm asking as I'm interested in making a partition (first time Mac owner) but I don't want to restrict my drive too much and if it's not reversible, I definitely won't do it.

Removing a Windows partition and giving the space back to OS X is easy as pie.
 
I've always had trouble with removing boot camp and doing it again. The hdd doesn't want to partition again and have to wipe osx as well as windows very annoying.
 
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