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Is 256gb SSD enough?
- Thread starter etaleb
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Not really, but you can buy a hard drive and leave it plugged and redirect downloads and stuff there. That's what I did (I also have a 250gb Mac mini and the whole Adobe suite)
Fair, as said I just don't worry about it. My M1 will likely be obsolete before the SSD fails. When both 13"s were on Big Sur I looked at the swap file usage, while I agree the Apple Silicon Mac's do swap more the difference wasn't night & day.
A new HW platform is bound to have teething problems and swap file usage was definitely one of them with Apple Silicon in the early days. Then the "worry wardens" jumped on it and blew it out of all proportions.
TBH it's two separate schools of thought at play...
1 It's far better to have adequate drive space inclusive of free space with SSD's.
2 Modern Mac's are basically unrepairable. So I tend to go with spec I need for the task, not the spec I just like or want.
Think is also more complex with portables as IMO battery life & portability are significant factors beyond sheer performance as once the battery is dry the notebook is just deadweight. I really like the 14"MBP, however it cant touch my 13" MBP's battery life. The new M2 16" is very impressive with it's runtime off the mains, yet is too big and wont fit into majority of hotel room safe's.
When I travel it's generally with 13" MBP and 17" PC, however I can secure and alarm the PC and significantly less attractive. If well off the beaten track it's 12" & 13" Mac's as back to portability and I need a level of redundancy.
Q-6
That's what I do as I'm a cross platform user; Video is on spinners, music is on an external SSD with all backed up. The really important data is automatically backed up across multiple systems/platforms via point to point encrypted cloud server.
What sits on the 256 drives is factor of function, so I can keep the systems lean. Barring when they are retired, then I don't care. They then tend to get filled up with the usual junk or utilised as a media server.
My current media server is an Acer Switch 5, with an imposing i3 processor, a whopping 4GB RAM, monstrous 128GB SSD. It's strapped to 12 TB of video across multiple drives, streams without issue and has sadly suffered 8% battery wear in the last 5 years.
Thing is it's not about the spec, it's about what you can get out of that spec
Q-6
Me too, it's a bit of work to keep it from filling up, but at this point 512GB wouldn't be that much different if we're talking device/photo/video backups, it's not difficult to build up hundreds of gigabytes of media if you've got live photos turned on, and dabble in 4K/60/HDR videos. Arguably neither are needed, but it's nice to have your memories sharper/ animated if you can. Outside of that documents don't usually take up a ton of space (again, unless multimedia heavy) and most of the really big apps are 3D games.That's what I do as I'm a cross platform user; Video is on spinners, music is on an external SSD with all backed up. The really important data is automatically backed up across multiple systems/platforms via point to point encrypted cloud server.
What sits on the 256 drives is factor of function, so I can keep the systems lean. Barring when they are retired, then I don't care. They then tend to get filled up with the usual junk or utilised as a media server.
My current media server is an Acer Switch 5, with an imposing i3 processor, a whopping 4GB RAM, monstrous 128GB SSD. It's strapped to 12 TB of video across multiple drives, streams without issue and has sadly suffered 8% battery wear in the last 5 years.
Thing is it's not about the spec, it's about what you can get out of that spec
Q-6
Just learnt over time is far safer to have your media on multiple external drives versus one large internal that's basically unrecoverable in the event of issue arising.
All the important data backup is automated, media I rip to the respective external drive. Makes for an easy life
Q-6
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That can be moved to external drives either manually each time you backup, or automatically forever if you use tricks with symlink.
I have a 2012 mini I upgraded to a 256GB SSD plus 4TB & 2TB external drives. The internal drive still has 107GB of free space left since I use 4TB drive for Time Machine and the 2TB for most all other storage. They're 5200 RPM spinny USB A drives so they are slow but for storage they are fine.
256gb should not be allowed in apple devices anymore, Especially Macs. That was the standard back in 2004, I went with the mid tier M3 with 256gb SSD and 8GB ram, I regret it. These extremely low specs have already made my machine obsolete in the first week of using it, not to mention the m4 iMac came out 2 days after I received my iMac. Very upset about that, and deserve a free upgrade to the m4 bottom tier since that was 400$ less that my current M3 and has higher specs. really upset at apple for this. In my case the mid tier M3 iMac I purchased at 1600$ yesterday, is more expensive than the M4 with 12gb Ram and 10-core GPU base model that came out a day later.
If that was actually the case Apple would use 512 as the minimum, the real answer is that for the vast majority of people 256GB is more than enough.
Is 256gb SSD enough?
It depends, for what.
If you have installed only some applications and the actual 2-3 projects you are working on, than I would say, that you can live with 256GB SSD.
But if you want to have your photos library, music, downloads folder, videos etc. on you main drive, than the answer is: no. It wont be enough.
Not to speak of modern (AAA) games, where only one game needs 100+ GB storage space.
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256GB is enough for some users, not for others.
Simple solution: Determine what YOUR requirements are and buy a Mac that meets those requirements. Let others do the same.
Simple solution: Determine what YOUR requirements are and buy a Mac that meets those requirements. Let others do the same.
My wife is a non-technical user. When I bought her MacBook Air M1, I upgraded to 16GB and 1TB. It was well worth it since I do not have any tech issues with her running out of space.
Note that you should ALWAYS have 20% - 25% free space. It extends SSD life. More importantly, macOS is not a graceful partner running out of disk space.
When she had just 512GB, there were recurring issues where I have to weed through the drive to clean it up.
Note that you should ALWAYS have 20% - 25% free space. It extends SSD life. More importantly, macOS is not a graceful partner running out of disk space.
When she had just 512GB, there were recurring issues where I have to weed through the drive to clean it up.
256GB is enough for my requirements-for additional storage I just hook up my 1TB Samsung T5 portable SSD to one of my M4 mini's USB-C ports.
Interesting... how did you manage to upgrade the soldered SSD and RAM? Do you have the right equipment for this?