How many free SSD space is recommended to keep the M1 MacBook Pro in good performance?

[hajime]

Hi, in my 2019 16", I have used 750GB of my 1TB SSD space. I had both Mac OS and Bootcamp Windows installed. I plan to migrate the files to a new M1 MacBook Pro. I may be able to move some stuffs to external storage but don't know how much disk space yet. Probably those Windows file (300GB) as M1 cannot run some Windows app. I am not so familiar with the M1 chip. Somewhere I read that we need to have some amount of free SSD space for the M1 MacBook Pro to work efficiently. Is that true? How much extra do we need to have all the time? Somewhere I also read that Monterey and M1 Mac use some kind of swap SSD more than older generations of Mac and OS. In my case, is it better to have a 1TB SSD or 2TB internal SSD?

 

[Mikael H]

Hi, in my 2019 16", I have used 750GB of my 1TB SSD space. I had both Mac OS and Bootcamp Windows installed. I plan to migrate the files to a new M1 MacBook Pro. I may be able to move some stuffs to external storage but don't know how much disk space yet. Probably those Windows file (300GB) as M1 cannot run some Windows app. I am not so familiar with the M1 chip. Somewhere I read that we need to have some amount of free SSD space for the M1 MacBook Pro to work efficiently. Is that true? How much extra do we need to have all the time? Somewhere I also read that Monterey and M1 Mac use some kind of swap SSD more than older generations of Mac and OS. In my case, is it better to have a 1TB SSD or 2TB internal SSD?

The old rule of thumb was that you shouldn't exceed 80% usage on an SSD to keep performance high. Note that for most use cases these SSDs are quick enough that I wouldn't necessarily worry that much.

Bootcamp doesn't exist on Apple Silicon macs, so at least you won't lose space to a separate partition: If you feel like experimenting with unsupported virtual machines, these usually utilize sparse, or thin, disk images, so they only take up about as much space as they actually use.

If the 750 GB used include the 300 GB Windows partition that you won't need, I wouldn't worry a lot about getting a 1 TB disk. If you plan on keeping the machine for very long, the additional cost of a 2TB disk isn't a lot of money per month of usable lifetime, though...

 

[hajime]

I probably keep it for about 2.5-3 years. Maybe longer. I don't know if somebody will find a way to make the M1 Mac works with all Windows applications in the near future. If there is such a way and performance is as least as good as the i9 MacBook Pro 2019 running Bootcamp, I will probably move those Windows files back. I think I assigned 300GB for Bootcamp and 700GB for Mac OS. I don't remember the details. I think before I sold it, I erased the Bootcamp partition and from Disk utilities, I saw 750GB of the 1TB SSD used. In this case, is it better to choose a 1TB or 2TB SSD?

Anybody knows if the SSD inside the M1 MacBook Pro have the 20% provisioned space "built-in"?