Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Extra Storage Question

serkan

serkan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 14, 2012
427
69
Menlo Park,California
Hi all,

I have the Mid-2017 15.6' MBP with 256 gb storage but I have a feeling that it might not be eneough in the upcoming years.

I also have purchased the Hyperdrive to have USB and other ports when I need them.

What do you guys suggest me to do for an external solution ? Should I get something like flash drive with USB / USB-C or extarnal HD/SSD ? I am. Ot purting a hard budget but I believe 100$ is my ceiling.

I have seen in Target that they have USB 3.0 128 GB Flash Drive for 32$ and many more online. And there is G drive on Apple store for 99$

Any help is appriciated.
 
How much storage do you need? And what type of speeds are you looking for?

Is this going to be to backup what is being stored on the internal SSD or other external media you currently own?
 
I have an early 2015 MBP 13 inch. It too has a 256 GB drive. Although, I have so only maxed out to 160 GBs, which includes things like a few Windows VMs, my small iTunes library, my 5 GB photo library, 5 GBs of synced OneDrive and a variety of apps. I went with it like this for about a year until I picked up a 2 TB G-Drive, which split up and allocated about 500 GB for Time Machine and a shared exFAT partition for Windows and macOS.

An external drive should be sufficient. I personally download a lot of videos, so, I need a medium to back them up after I watched them. So, any good old portable external should do well, not to mention they are bargain. I bought mine at the Apple Store for about $100; you should be able to get a 4 TB this year for the same price. If you wait until November, you might be able to get 5 TB models.
 
  • Like
Reactions: serkan
ZapNZs said:
How much storage do you need? And what type of speeds are you looking for?

Is this going to be to backup what is being stored on the internal SSD or other external media you currently own?
Click to expand...

I haven't really thought about it but I believe minimum will be 128 GB.

I will mainly use it for Time Machine backups, maybe some document files of the programs like VM files and such.

I believe at this point flash drive won't be useful as external drive.
 
serkan said:
I haven't really thought about it but I believe minimum will be 128 GB.

I will mainly use it for Time Machine backups, maybe some document files of the programs like VM files and such.

I believe at this point flash drive won't be useful as external drive.
Click to expand...

If you are going to run VMs from it, you really need a SSD unless you are using a crazy fast flash drive like the 256 GB Corsair Voyager GTX (which has a SSD controller in it, and I believe is still only available in USB-A.) If you run a VM from a HDD, it's going to get frustrating very quickly. The inexpensive $30 128 GB flash drives are also irritating slow, as a general rule, and I've also noticed some of the value flash drives are not the most reliable of mediums.

In the coming months, you might be able to find some really good deals on the Samsung T3 as Samsung is releasing the T5 SSD soon (so, even if Samsung does not discontinue the T3 outright, retailers may want to move most of their T3 stock.) The 500 GB version has been regularly available for well under $200. This would be a good solution for Time Machine, large file transfers, and running virtual machines directly off of.

If you are in dire need of storage right now and the budget is stiff, the 1 TB Western Digital Black 2.5 is like $60 - throw it in a USB-C enclosure and you have a very good HDD (obviously, it wouldn't be very good for running VMs from, through - but it's a great drive to back up your Mac and back up your flash drives, phones, and external SSDs that may contain data that isn't also stored on the local disk.)
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
  • Like
Reactions: serkan
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back