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Air:128 or 256?

nightlong

nightlong

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 16, 2012
864
168
Australia
Those who have 2012 Air 13" with 128 ... Is it too tight, do you wish you had ordered 256?

those who did get 256 ... does it feel more like luxury than necessity? If you have Usb 3 storage, is 128 on the Air plenty as a "workbench" with external drive as filing cabinet?
 
Depends on your needs... No one can give you a clear and accurate answer in this matter. I for one have ordered the 512 GB version mainly because I hate carrying additional hardware around, budget is not a problem and although I might not need all that space, I'll surely appreciate it when I save a couple virtual images stored, bootcamp with some possible games installed, etc. ( of course, you could try managing your space in a more efficient manner, but that's again subjective, isn't it? ) :)

You need to provide more info in order for people to attempt to give "real" advices ( like: what are you planning to use the MBA for, do you play games, store movies, do you want to run Bootcamp or VMWare, etc, etc, etc )... as far as we know, even 64GB could be more than plenty for your needs and 128GB would be luxury.
 
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I'm not planning to load the MBA up with massive amounts of photos, music, and with fusion, windows etc. my old mini mac, iMac, and their external drives will serve as my archive, and I'll get a USB3 drive for the Air to back that up along with most important old stuff.
The MBA like my iPad will just have small selection of music and photo files for when travelling. I am mostly a writer, so plenty of room for current text files on 128 gb, but I also will be developing ebooks, and I'm interested in how other people are working with storage on and off the computer.
 
I'm in the same boat, media is on my mini, my current MacBook pro has about 30gig of photo,s which I could relocate to my NAS.

I can't decide between 128/256. And 4/8 gig.

As its mainly a consuming machine to supplement my iPad I think 4gig memory will be fine, I,m currently thinking 256 as it will provide plenty of expansion and makes sense owning a machine over 4 years.

Just seems a lot of money for a bit extra which makes me think of a base pro and do the upgrades myself, weight is not my overall issue but cost and reliability is, I'd prefer to go a full apple supply route.

I'll watch what people advise.
 
I find 128GB to be more than adequate for my uses. But I don't have a large iTunes library anymore (use Spotify almost exclusively), and don't keep many movies or other large media files - I can stream from my NAS for that.
 
If you run any virtual machines, I would definitely get the 256. Just my Windows 7 VM without a whole lot installed is ~33GB. Also, if you store photos, movies, or music you will need more room.
 
I did just like a budget with two columns (1) for what I need right now and (2) where I expected to be in 2 years.

Examples:

OS (OX X + Bootcamp + VMWare): 80GB - 90GB
MP3: 60GB - 80GB
My Pics & my home Vids: 30GB - 60GB
Etc...

I came up to about 210GB - 260GB which made me choose the 512GB.
 
I have the 128GB model. Here is my storage report as an example. I feel there is plenty of space. I did use the $300 I saved by not getting the 256GB drive to buy a $25 32GB SD card, to which I moved 16GB of CBR files I rarely access.

 
I too ordered the 128GB version of the MBA. I would like more SSD space, but was not able to justify the extra expense. Good thing its that the SSD is user replaceable (contrary to what Apple tells you) and hopefully an aftermarket 512GB SSD for the MBA will be ~$200 in the next year. I will upgrade then.
 
I've never used SD cards. Are they as fast as the SSD in the Air? And how much is a 32gb card? is that the largest size?
 
i got the 128 and although it is just fine for me I am getting the Nifty Minidrive to put a 64 Gb (or bigger) MicroSD card in. Not even close in speeds to an SSD, but for the times I go abroad without internet (and thus cannot stream my movies/videos from my NAS) I can load up the MicroSD.
 
Davidkoh said:
i got the 128 and although it is just fine for me I am getting the Nifty Minidrive to put a 64 Gb (or bigger) MicroSD card in. Not even close in speeds to an SSD, but for the times I go abroad without internet (and thus cannot stream my movies/videos from my NAS) I can load up the MicroSD.
Click to expand...

So is access speed to SD card similar to HDD?
 
if u want to use bootcamp, get the 256gb.

i bought the 128GB 11" air, and thought i wouldn't use bootcamp. but i'm amazed by how increased the performance of intel HD 4000, so i decided to use bootcamp and played call of duty black ops. it's very playable and i just finished it.

the 128GB is very small for bootcamp. so i decided to get the OWC 240GB mercury aura pro, and couldn't be happier. too bad i wasted so much money by choosing this path. i should have bought the 256GB at the first time.

can't wait to buy OWC envoy to make use of my old 128GB flash storage.
 
aleni said:
if u want to use bootcamp, get the 256gb.

i bought the 128GB 11" air, and thought i wouldn't use bootcamp. but i'm amazed by how increased the performance of intel HD 4000, so i decided to use bootcamp and played call of duty black ops. it's very playable and i just finished it.

the 128GB is very small for bootcamp. so i decided to get the OWC 240GB mercury aura pro, and couldn't be happier. too bad i wasted so much money by choosing this path. i should have bought the 256GB at the first time.

can't wait to buy OWC envoy to make use of my old 128GB flash storage.
Click to expand...

Since you now own two SSDs I wouldn't call it a waste of money. In fact you can turn it around to having saved money. Even if they would never release a new envoy, you'd then have a 128GB SSD to sell off as a used part and that would likely more than make up for the extra.. $19? you had to pay for the OWC 240GB SSD :)

Though I have to disagree about 128GB being the deal breaker for light bootcamp use. Err, well it will totally depend on person to person, of course.

I have bootcamp on my 128GB drive. I made the minimal 20GB drive for that and set up MacDrive (write access to the HFS-partition) in case I need to put a big file somewhere and I happen to be logged into Windows.

I have about 5GB space free on the windows partition and that is with file and folder compression turned on, a 4GB big game installed and the page-file set to 320-512MB. By default it's way bigger.

In an administrator's command prompt one should write "powercfg -h off" to switch off the hibernation file (4/8GB saved) but in my case it seemed to be turned off at install already.
 
It's interesting, I'm in a very similar boat. I probably will be using bootcamp as there is still some software that I use that is Windows based (things like Rawtherapee, Office (need vba support) and some more complicated engineering programs.

I think I'm going to opt for 8Gb Ram: why not, it's not much to upgrade. But I can't decide whether it is worth £250 to move up to 256Gb. How easy is it to retrofit a new SSD when drives with the right connections become available? A quick look on some websites indicate that a 256GB SSD is only £150 - Apple seem a bit cheeky asking for an extra £250 for the upgrade.
 
Nightlong - what did you decide on?
128 or 256?

I,m edging towards 128 as I have 3tb on my NAS, still not 100% though till I visit the apple store on Friday may bottle it and go 256 although I know 128 should be fine....
 
Why not wait to see if you really need the extra space?

I'm facing the same decision but with the OWC 240gb drive at $320, it seems better to wait and see if I really need the extra space. You may be losing a few gigs going this route (240 vs 256), but you will have the 128 as a backup or could probably sell - each would make the OWC approach more attractive.

Of course there's always the argument of OEM vs aftermarket, but I've always had a good experience with OWC's products and service. Not to mention, the price of memory is pretty volatile, and hopefully it will be cheaper at some point in the future.
 
keeper said:
Nightlong - what did you decide on?
128 or 256?

I,m edging towards 128 as I have 3tb on my NAS, still not 100% though till I visit the apple store on Friday may bottle it and go 256 although I know 128 should be fine....
Click to expand...

Still dithering! I will get 8gb ram, I think that's essential and it's not too expensive. But dithering about 128/256. Some people here saying they can retrofit bigger SSD, to an Air, later when it is cheaper. I thought that was non-user replaceable, and you had to stick with what you got at the start. Or are they talking about retrofitting a MacBook pro? Like everyone I'm trying to peek through Apple's doubled down secrecy to next year ... What might be ....retina iMac? Or ... Second gen rMbp or Who knows! Trying to figure out need versus over-capitalising on Air 13 inch now versus perhaps being so happy with it if I do 8/256 that upgrade lust will be easily shelved for 3 years or so. Ha ha. I do prefer to have enough on board to only need external drive for backup. Hmmmmm ... Still have some time to dither, I want to be certain it will come with ML installed, learning a lot here from what more tech-savvy than me are doing, so thanks everyone!! are people with usb3 drives finding that works well with internal SSD, or is it very much slower?
 
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