2018 128GB 8GB ram MBA - HD usage

[icloudUser]

128GB is not enough in this days, not even 256Gb is not enough. 500GB is ok.

It would appear thats not what Apple wants you to believe otherwise why would they sell it. Most people know why - as it would promote their cloud services etc.

Anyways I dont care. 128GB is plenty for me only if the macOS would allow me to use it without regular maintenance like purging the local snaps

I refuse to make an already exorbitant purchase more of it by pouring in more money on the next higher capacity model (is it 200USD/EUR more for the 256 model?) because macOS does certain things in peculiar way and make space for it -LOL. The problem lies in there - in the OS.
e.g. yesterday I deleted a ~9 GB local snapshot!! Auto back up is OFF in TM prefs.
I wouldn't be writing this if it were a few hundred MBs of smart file versioning/history but 9 gbs?

 

[AustinIllini]

256 is fine for me but I literally only use my MBA for light photo editing, office applications, internet browsing, and email for work and things.

 

[auxbuss]

128GB is not enough in this days...

I must have been holding it wrong for the past six months ;-)

Storage is dependent on usage. 128Gb is an awful lot of storage.

 

[AustinIllini]

I must have been holding it wrong for the past six months ;-)

Storage is dependent on usage. 128Gb is an awful lot of storage.

The System uses a fairly large amount of pace on that 128 though

 

[auxbuss]

The System uses a fairly large amount of pace on that 128 though

Let's take a look...

Apps and Users is going to vary by individual usage, otherwise, most is system-related. I make that ~16.5Gb, which macOS is showing as 18Gb – I presume because size on disk is greater than usage.

 

[icloudUser]

Let's take a look...

Apps and Users is going to vary by individual usage, otherwise, most is system-related. I make that ~16.5Gb, which macOS is showing as 18Gb – I presume because size on disk is greater than usage.

Thanks. Right off the bat 7 gb is reserved so the starting point is 121 g in the base model. I presume that would be true across all models.
And then in my MBA, system usage varies a lot due to TM local snaps and my large Icloud photo lib (the optimize storage is turned ON)
When I use Daisy disk or similar, I find that the photo lib is ~20G and the about MAC -->Storage it shows photos is ~ 5gb !! And this has been the case in the last while (not that macOS is trying to upload or anything)

I am happy with the 128g as most of my data is stored in Icloud but macOs's mysterious storage handling is spoiling it for me and I would still be annoyed if I had the higher storage specs on the MBA

 

[mollyc]

So I looked at my iMac the other day. I have a 1T SSD there. My system storage was around 60gb. Then I started deleting old programs, emptied the trash, etc. and suddenly I was at about 150gb system storage. So I have no idea. At least my hard drive is less than half full.

 

[icloudUser]

So I looked at my iMac the other day. I have a 1T SSD there. My system storage was around 60gb. Then I started deleting old programs, emptied the trash, etc. and suddenly I was at about 150gb system storage. So I have no idea. At least my hard drive is less than half full.

Thats more than the total storage in my MBA - lol
Did you restart? Does it still show 150g used by the system after?

 

[mollyc]

Thats more than the total storage in my MBA - lol
Did you restart? Does it still show 150g used by the system after?

Initially after a restart, yes, it was that high again, but then 15 minutes later it was down to 76GB. It obviously caches certain things at different times. I do use Time Machine on this machine (to a NAS) and I haven't checked if there are local snapshots or not. I have plenty of working room on this machine and can offload to the NAS as needed.

 

[auxbuss]

Thanks. Right off the bat 7 gb is reserved so the starting point is 121 g in the base model. I presume that would be true across all models.

It goes up a bit as the SSD size increases. My 512Gb has 500Gb available, for example.

 

[icymountain]

It would appear thats not what Apple wants you to believe otherwise why would they sell it. Most people know why - as it would promote their cloud services etc.

I think they do not want to sell it; they just want to advertise it based on price to get customers in the store and then make the customers who have entered the store purchase higher storage capacities. The OS does not make it very easy to live with the basic storage option either so that more customers are convinced to buy more storage next time...

That being said it is possible to work around this as you are doing. My suggestion would be to use a graphical disk usage display tool (like "filelight", but there are many other options) to see what is using up so much space and then taking actions to fix it.

 

[icloudUser]

I think they do not want to sell it; they just want to advertise it based on price to get customers in the store and then make the customers who have entered the store purchase higher storage capacities. The OS does not make it very easy to live with the basic storage option either so that more customers are convinced to buy more storage next time...

That being said it is possible to work around this as you are doing. My suggestion would be to use a graphical disk usage display tool (like "filelight", but there are many other options) to see what is using up so much space and then taking actions to fix it.

Thanks. I will check out fileLight. I am already using Disk Inventgory X and Daisy disk.

Agree with the above but I am still not convinced on going for a higher storage model -lol its too much money to part with only to allow macOS spread its wings unnecessarily.

I got the MBA as a replacement for the ipad pro and I am happy with it except that it makes me feel like a system admin around it