250GB or 320GB hard drive?

[holypetunias]

Hey, so i'm going to be a freshman in college and have decided to buy a 13" Macbook Pro laptop. I'd be getting the cheapest one ($1199) and using it for the internet, writing papers, storing music and photos, and whatever else I may become interested in while i'm in college. My question is, when ordering, for $40 I can bump the hard drive up from 250GB to 320GB...is it worth it for what i'd be using the computer for?

 

[Matthew Yohe]

That's not really a question we can answer.

Is it worth it to you to have 70GB more space?

Do you have a bunch of audio/photos that you will be bringing over?

 

[cluthz]

Buy the cheapest, upgrade HD yourself, when needed.

 

[MonkeyET]

For $40 you can't buy a 320GB hard drive. I suppose it cannot hurt. But the real question is, will you need it? Do you keep uncompressed music on the drive, or RAW pictures?

 

[DanMacApple]

250GB will most likely be sufficient, but like it was already noted $40 is a fair price for 320GB. I believe last years MBP only came with 160GB!!

 

[184550]

You can never have too much space, when it comes to computers at least. I'd shell out the extra $40 and upgrade.

 

[DoFoT9]

Buy the cheapest, upgrade HD yourself, when needed.

best option. nothing gained by paying the extra through apple.

 

[kny3twalker]

For $40 you can't buy a 320GB hard drive. I suppose it cannot hurt. But the real question is, will you need it? Do you keep uncompressed music on the drive, or RAW pictures?

Sure you can buy a 320gb drive for $40. You can buy a 3.5" 2TB for $99. Honestly apple upgrades are terribly overpriced and last I checked 250+320>320.

 

[DoFoT9]

Sure you can buy a 320gb drive for $40. You can buy a 3.5" 2TB for $99. Honestly apple upgrades are terribly overpriced and last I checked 250+320>320.

they are less then $99 now! a friend bought one for $95 australian dollars, which is $85US!

 

[powerhouse7]

I would most certainly get the upgrade. For longevity It's so worth the money. Having to decide what music/movies/etc to delete just to free up space is the worst feeling. Do it. You can never have too much hard drive space.

 

[rnelan7]

You can get a 500gb HDD offline for around $50 and install it yourself. There are plenty of youtube videos showing how to do this. You might think 500gb could be too big but you never know down the line.

 

[warrena]

If you don't want to deal with changing the drive yourself, get the 320 as more capacity will ultimately be better - it will maintain speed longer as well as be better for several years worth of data.

If you can deal with changing the drive yourself (very easy), then get the 250 and buy a 320 or 500 and change it yourself. For 10-15$ or so you can get a USB case for the original 250 and now you have a backup drive.

I would always err on the side of more capacity.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Apple upgrades are a rip off. Get the stock HD model then go buy a 7200RPM 320GB drive online for $50 or a 500GB drive for $75. Installing a drive in a MBP is easy as long as you know how to use a screw driver (you will also need to buy a Torx 6 driver if you don't have one).

Detailed, step-by-step instructions here. Installing your own drive will not void your warranty as long as you follow the steps and don't touch anything you are not supposed to touch.

Take your stock OEM drive and either put it in an external case to use as a secondary drive or just put it away in case you need to send your machine in for warranty service. You will want to reinstall the OEM drive as Apple will not guarantee return of your 3rd party drive or RAM.