Is 256GB enough?

[Tanax]

'As confirmed by many others', who clearly aren't running a boot camp partition by the sounds of it. Without that I'm using 212Gb of 512GB, and that's with all my media on an external array. Email cache, Lightroom previews, all the 'stuff' that the OS shoves on the system drive by default (such as application libraries). I could tidy up, a little, but I'd still be at over 100GB just for OS X and my apps. Add a Windows partition too (with all its apps) and you are close to the 256GB limit. It would fit, but it would be tight and I'd be spending time juggling things around.

Without the bootcamp partition I would agree 256GB would be enough, but with it? Get the 512GB, it's not a massive increase in cost but will save you problems in future when you run out of space and wish you would have gotten the bigger drive. Considering that Apple seal up the iMac so you can't upgrade I don't know why anyone would go for the 256GB, I'd even be tempted to say go for the 1TB and have done with it. Or is all this too expensive for you? ;o)

Holy frakk
My MBP '09 (had it for 6 years now) is still having 180 GB free space of its 256 GB SSD.. For me, even with Bootcamp, 256 GB would be enough. I guess those mail caches eat up a lot of space - I just use webmail version of Inbox.

 

[AlexGraphicD]

Holy frakk
My MBP '09 (had it for 6 years now) is still having 180 GB free space of its 256 GB SSD.. For me, even with Bootcamp, 256 GB would be enough. I guess those mail caches eat up a lot of space - I just use webmail version of Inbox.

What is that exactly?

 

[Tanax]

What is that exactly?

It's Google's new mail. Basically Gmail but much more simplified and easier to use. Also being designed to always as much as possible have a clear empty inbox by archiving those that you've read, delete those you don't want to archive and snooze those you'll look at later!

https://inbox.google.com

 

[hifimacianer]

I have a 128GB SSD in my 2008 iMac, and there is also some space left. And I also run Windows 7 in VirtualBox for some smaller Apps that aren't available for OSX.

So I would think 256GB for OSX, apps and even a bigger Bootcamp Partition should be enough.
I store my files on a NAS (Documents, Music, Movies) and on a 1TB FireWire HD (Photos).

I'll buy the 5k iMac with 256GB SSD, and store my files that need fast speeds on a 1TB SSD (via USB3).
I think that is fast enough for all of my Tasks. I really don't see a real world scenario (for my work), where the screaming fast speeds of the internal SSD are necessary.

 

[maflynn]

I have a 256GB SSD in my MBP and its barely big enough to hold my stuff. Basically I have to offload my music library and non current images to my Drobo.

One thing a desktop machine has that I wanted was sufficient storage at a decent price. Now I need to spend 500 extra for the 512SSD or 300 for a 2TB Fusion drive (the 1TB Fusion drive has that paltry 24GB flash storage).

 

[hifimacianer]

It all depends on how you manage your files.
If you want to have all of your Music and Images internally, then 256GB is not enough.

My Photos Library alone is more than 250GB in size (and still growing fast), so even the 512GB SSD would be too small in a few years. Actually I have my Photos on the FireWire drive, and they load really fast. All other files are on my NAS, connected via Gigabit Ethernet, what is also fast enough for Music, Movies and other documents. With a external SSD it will be even faster, so I really don't need a super fast SSD inside for this kind of files.

 

[AFEPPL]

Agree, i don't run any of that on my "local storage". its all NAS.
I use local only for apps and even on my oldest machine with 128GB I'm still at 50% after 3 years.

 

[shaunp]

Holy frakk
My MBP '09 (had it for 6 years now) is still having 180 GB free space of its 256 GB SSD.. For me, even with Bootcamp, 256 GB would be enough. I guess those mail caches eat up a lot of space - I just use webmail version of Inbox.

I guess you don't have many apps installed either. You are using less then 80GB for two OS's and all the apps??