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I wish, I wish, I wish I'd got the 256GB SSD!
- Thread starter ShaneBunting
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Just curious - why not use the card reader and not take up a USB port?
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Good question. I guess because at the time, I hadn't found a card reader that was flush (13" rMBP) and the previous card readers that I had didn't have enough hold to keep them from being knocked loose. The elago was slim enough to use all the time. Plus, at home I use a Thunderbolt Display and any USB things are plugged into that. But there's no reason why a card reader wouldn't work just as well, if not better.
Question: I have a mid-2012 128gb with Toshiba SSD. Is upgrading the SSD as simple as buying a pulled OEM 256gb SSD and installing it? Do I need to change adapters or is it basically PnP in terms of the install? I see several on 'that auction site' which don't include their adapter. The OWC ssd's are pricey. Thanks in advance.
Or he could save money and just buy an external with an usb port and plug into his router
why don't you just partition off like 15gb and install windows on it, then install all of the windows applications and media on an external hdd???
You can move some of your mac apps and media onto an external hdd to save some space as well if you want.
You can get a very small form factor 1TB hdd for pretty cheap. You can even partition it and have storage for OS X and Windows on the same drive.
You can move some of your mac apps and media onto an external hdd to save some space as well if you want.
You can get a very small form factor 1TB hdd for pretty cheap. You can even partition it and have storage for OS X and Windows on the same drive.
I think your best bet is Parallels/Fusion.
You can configure the VM to have a larger hard drive, but it will only actually take up as much space as is actually used on the drive. So, you could set up the VM with a 100GB hard drive, but if only 30 GB is filled, it will only take up about 30GB on your actual drive.
Hey, it's not that much! Mine is using 33 GB right now and I've taken only basic measures to keep the usage down (and have Visual Studio and some other stuff installed.) I haven't even disabled hibernation.
There are some things you'll want to watch out for to keep the usage down:
- use disk cleanup to clean out stuff. Also go to the Advanced panel to remove system restore points after updates. (It keeps the last system restore point, so you still have some rollback capabilities if an update goes wrong.
- disable hibernation (google it) -- the hibernation files are roughly the size of your RAM so that's multiple gigabytes. Hibernation isn't too useful for a VM.
You do need to dedicate at least 2 GB physical RAM to run your VM, meaning you better have at least 4GB in your computer. (Some people swear you need more, but I run with 2 GB all the time and it seems fine. I guess I don't use memory hog software, though Visual Studio isn't exactly lightweight. I'd avoid browsers.)
unless you need to run windows and mac apps side by side, fusion/parallels is one of the worst solutions imo. You need to split your RAM between both OS's and performance is going to take a hit. Unless you really need to run programs side by side, or you have a machine with a lot of ram (16gb+), you are much better off just using bootcamp where you can use the machines full power for either OS. Especially if you are using apps which require the GPU.
Most people using Parallels or VMWare generally do it because they have to run apps side-by-side. It's also incredibly convenient. Booting into Windows via Bootcamp, not so much.
This is really only applicable if you are going to be running games or other intensive applications. For most other stuff, like in my case apps that I run on Windows because I can't run on Mac or prefer the Windows version (like MS Office, Quicken, Garmin Mapsource, etc.), a VM solution is much more convenient than having to reboot, and performance is just fine.
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But you can run it in Parallels. 216MB of disk space. Sweet.
which is why i said, unless you need to run apps side by side, it's generally not worth the performance hit you suffer by running a virtual machine.
I've had Windows 8 and OSX running side-by-side on an 11" Air with a 64GB SSD.
It really isn't that bad. Admittedly, only running Visual Web Developer. But still...
yeah, try to open up photoshop, dreamweaver, after effects, final cut, Call of Duty, Crysis, Battlefield, etc. and you are going to wish you had native performance over a virtual machine.
It works great for some uses, especially if you need to run apps side by side, but it is not a great solution for people who need to run intensive apps especially GPU and RAM.
Of course not, but who's playing games like that on an Air, virtualised, anyway?
that was the whole point of me saying that a virtual machine is not the best method of running windows unless you need to run apps side by side. If you are gaming or running intensive RAM/GPU apps, bootcamp is way better. It might take you 30 seconds to reboot into windows, but at least you will get the full performance of your machine.
I completely agree with the part I emboldened.
I use about 40GB of space. Itunes uses less than 3GB for songs that I really like (~250), match for everything else.
Video is either streamed or deleted after watching. Currently I have about 7GB of Youtube videos downloaded. Watch them & delete.
Applications take up 9GB's. SimCity is by far the largest, but I have office 2011, iWork 08, Photoshop CS5 and InDesign CS5 installed among others. I have no use for iLife, so it was deleted on day 1.
Documents are all stored in Dropbox which takes up 1.1GB of space. That includes all of the photos I have stored on my machine as well as current projects. Photos are automatically uploaded from my iPhone. I keep the past 2 years' worth of pics on my computer, all of the other ones are offloaded to my desktop (where they're backed up to everpix & CrashPlan). Home movies are also offloaded to be backed up.
Old projects & documents are archived to my desktop & backed up.
Heck, /private/var/vm takes up 6.4 GB, 15% of my usage.
I have a WinXP VM that I use for work sometimes (AutoCAD 2008). The vhd is set to max at 10GB, but it's currently sitting at 5.5GB. Normally, that resides on an external HD.
Overall, there's really not a lot of housekeeping that I do. Miro (which I use to manage youtube downloads through a neat bit of internet magic) automatically deletes the videos 24 hours after playing. Maybe once a week, I will connect my iphone & transfer videos. Once a year I will have to archive old photos. And I copy the VM as needed.
I bought a 64GB and 128GB USB Patriot Magnum Flash Drive, they read and write 200+MB/s. I keep any larger files on these in my laptop bag or in my truck so wherever the laptop goes, the drives go.
These make it so I don't need to purchase any larger SSD's and also allows me to share than information between any other computers with a USB drive.
These make it so I don't need to purchase any larger SSD's and also allows me to share than information between any other computers with a USB drive.
Check out some of these upgrade videos from OWC. It really isn't very difficult to upgrade your drive.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_air_2012/
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook_air_2012/
Just FYI, those are for the 2010-2012 models that use a SATA connector. The 2013 switched to a PCIe connector. Even though the swap is the same, those blades won't work with the Air.
However, with more Macs using the PCIe SSD's, hopeful\ly we will get 3rd party replacements sooner rather than later.
I'd never heard this. Do you have a source that i could reference for how to set my time capsule up that way? sounds like a perfect solution for me if i could make it work!