How much storage?

[Rtr]

Buying my first Mac, have decided I like the Air better than the Pro. Concerned about having enough storage for the programs on the machine (will keep music, pictures, etc. on another HDD). Here is what I will be running, curious if I need 128 or 265

MS Office including Outlook
Quickbooks
Formlabs Preform
iTunes
iMovie

 

[Flowiee]

I have almost the same question. My budget alows me the 128gb, but I dont know for sure.

I will have:
MS office (no outlook)
Maschine software (20-40gb)
Itunes
Games (20gb)
Final cut pro or Imovie

Will 128gb be enough when looking for future updates etc. movies/pictures etc. I will store on my 1TB external HDD.

 

[MacJuice]

If you can afford it, definitely get the 256gb SSD. If you can't, I suggest buying an external hard drive with usb 3.0 off of amazon. You can get a 1TB drive for about $60.

Fresh out of the box you get about 120gb of the 128 on the drive. Flowiee, you'll be fine storing all that software on the air, but I would definitely put movies/pictures/music on an external drive.

 

[Tinknock71]

I bought the 128gb but all do is surf the net on mine have few songs in itunes few other programs and have used around 40gb, but if you have lots of movies, pics, music etc. I would go for the 256gb.

 

[macfacts]

I would recommend getting 256GB or more for storage space. If you plan on using an external usb3.0 drive, be aware many people (including myself) have problems with the drive constantly being ejected at random by Mac OS X (do a google search for the following to see: macbook air disk was not ejected properly).

I plan on getting an "ac" router with usb ports because of Apple not fixing this.

 

[Sonnestah]

Keep in mind that even though it is a 128gb drive, you will have only about 90gb free!

 

[Weaselboy]

It really entirely depends on how much personal data you have. A new machine with OS X and the iLife and iWork's apps uses about 20gb of space. If you can fit your data in the remaining 100gb you are in good shape. I easily have enough room with 128gb.

 

[Flowiee]

I also read that the 256gb is faster then the 128gb? Is this very noticable in daily tasks?

 

[Weaselboy]

I also read that the 256gb is faster then the 128gb? Is this very noticable in daily tasks?

It depends on what you do. If you are just browsing and typing documents you won't notice the difference. Much of the SSD benefit is the really fast seek times and less so the raw data throughput in normal operations.

Now if you often edit and copy and save 15gb video files, yes you will notice some difference.

 

[Flowiee]

Allright, still leaning to 128gb with external HDD then. But I will do some video editing in a few years. But for now, 128gb will be enough for me I think and with the occasional transfers of big files, it wouldn't make that big of a difference to me.
OWC is working on a aftermarket SSD right? How are the transfer speed of a OWC ssd? and is the 256gb upgrade worth €190 compared to a OWC ssd?

 

[ayres]

i'm a digital hoarder, and i came from a 1tb internal platter drive. if i can make 128gb work, then anyone can make it work. you already mentioned keeping music on an external, so why pay premium for redundant space?

as for the speed differences between 128 & 256... if you want to sit around all day benchmarking your computer and convincing yourself that you need certain baseline performances, then get the 256. any speed difference will not be noticeable in actual day-to-day use. whatever little time you might save when moving 20gb on a 256 vs 128 will surely be wasted some other way.

the mba is an amazing little machine. i'm so glad i'm not lugging around a 15 mbp anymore and constantly worrying about battery life.