How Much Space Do I Need in a new MacBook Pro

[AndrewMRiv]

Hello all. I am looking at the new MacBook Pro 13" with Retina. They look great!

I owned a MacBook (white, mid 2010) since the end of 2010 and it recently died on me.

I am very much used to having a lot of space. I upgraded to a 256gb SSD and removed the Optical Drive to add an additional 1tb HDD.

I used to use that as my computer for recording music (Logic), editing videos (Final Cut), doing homework, using photoshop, storing iPhoto pictures from my iOS devices, etc. but I now do all of that on a Hackintosh at home.

I plan to use this new MacBook mostly for web browsing, homework (iWork, and C programming with text editors), work (html and light photoshop), recording song ideas and some demos (garageband only since it wouldn't be anything super serious), light video editing (mostly just iMovie but maybe the occasional Final Cut Pro X), and of course streaming videos and listening to music.

I don't want to have to carry an external hard drive around so I would like to have enough space but I would also like to save some money on hard drive space if possible.

Thank you.

 

[mthos]

Hello all. I am looking at the new MacBook Pro 13" with Retina. They look great!

I owned a MacBook (white, mid 2010) since the end of 2010 and it recently died on me.

I am very much used to having a lot of space. I upgraded to a 256gb SSD and removed the Optical Drive to add an additional 1tb HDD.

I used to use that as my computer for recording music (Logic), editing videos (Final Cut), doing homework, using photoshop, storing iPhoto pictures from my iOS devices, etc. but I now do all of that on a Hackintosh at home.

I plan to use this new MacBook mostly for web browsing, homework (iWork, and C programming with text editors), work (html and light photoshop), recording song ideas and some demos (garageband only since it wouldn't be anything super serious), light video editing (mostly just iMovie but maybe the occasional Final Cut Pro X), and of course streaming videos and listening to music.

I don't want to have to carry an external hard drive around so I would like to have enough space but I would also like to save some money on hard drive space if possible.

Thank you.

I think you would be fine with 512GB personally for what you do.. did you always have your 1TB drive full? Go 512GB and get an external to dump stuff on when you're home so you're not carrying it around. That's what I do

edit: I assume you are going with a 15" MBP.. If you are, the high end comes with 512 as the base, otherwise you would need to upgrade the baseline 15" from 256. Also the difference from 512GB to 1TB alone I think is like $500, very expensive. $800 from 256GB to 1TB.

 

[double329]

256gb is good, but you have to be really good at housekeeping. 512gb will give you breathing room. Unless money is no object to you then 1tb will be best. I would go with 512gb and get external thunderbolt drive instead. That is my set up. I have seagate thunderbolt with 4tb disc. Man, that thing is screaming fast. Sure, it is not as mobile with external drive. But when it come time to rendering you video, I am sure you are sitting at your home doing it.

 

[AndrewMRiv]

Thank you for your responses.

Based on what you have said, I think that I will definitely be going with 512gb!

 

[troop231]

I have the 512 GB model, but I'm only using 82 GB. I also don't keep alot of files that I don't need; I'm picky about how clean my files are laid out/organized.

 

[PDFierro]

I have the 512 GB model, but I'm only using 82 GB. I also don't keep alot of files that I don't need; I'm picky about how clean my files are laid out/organized.

256GB is perfect for this kind of usage, too late now obviously. But most people won't need more than 256. Wouldn't hurt to have breathing room, though.

 

[troop231]

256GB is perfect for this kind of usage, too late now obviously. But most people won't need more than 256. Wouldn't hurt to have breathing room, though.

There wasn't a 256 GB option for my machine