Is 256gb SSD enough?

[Solarflares]

Interesting chart -- I am curious where it came from? Both its creation and the values reported (which I am guessing were measured by AmorphousDiskMark but were these taken from your computers or did you compile from this forum)?

Interesting that performance actually dropped in many cases from M1->M2/M3 and then only somewhat-to-mostly recovered with M4.

My reading is also that while upgrade from 256->512/1TB improved I/O to varying extents, upgrading to Pro/Max got the biggest bang.

Well, the biggest bang has to be the superb 16-core M4 Max Studio, but I guess an M3 Studio Ultra with 8TB/16TB might just top the SSD charts.
God knows I thought about the M3 Ultra a lot, but the M4’s superior single-core speed won the day, and 3GB/sec + internally, is a winner for me. That’ll do a 24-bit Drumkit, with 100 Audio tracks, and masses of plugins all day.
Strong reports of Cubase not assigning cores very well on the high core-count Mac’s, that sealed the deal for me. I saw many videos with Cubase using all 10 of the M4 Mini’s cores at 100%, but the multiple-core Pro/Max/Ultra boys were struggling at 27% processor utilisation.

Interesting that the base Mini M4 is slower with 1TB than a 512GB. That’s why I say 24GB/512GB is the sweet spot.
Possibly a rule of thumb is that doubling the offered standard SSD size - gives an appreciable speed boost on most models? But we’d have to leave out the M1 there, as it is a different beast.

I can’t remember the source of the chart, and I certainly didn’t compile it myself. It just ‘arrived’ on my screen one night, when researching M4 Minis. My main info I wanted was to do with fan-noise, and I bought the base M4 Mini over a used M4 Pro mainly for that reason, with a sub-$1,000 budget in mind. Having experienced the OWC 1M2/990 Pro on the Mini’s TB4, I then wanted comparable internal SSD speeds. So have since replaced the base Mini M4 with the 24/512, and it made a big difference. So much so, that with only a total of 200GB of data/samples - I’m ditching my RAZER TB4 hub and OWC 1M2, to go totally ‘in the box’.
The 24GB of RAM will allow me to load all samples into RAM too - so no more live-streaming samples from the SSD, which will keep working temperatures down, and hopefully increase longevity on a computer that isn’t internet-based, and mainly reads once per session from internal storage.

As I said elsewhere, selling all my NVMe peripherals will pay for my M4 Mini upgrade, and gave me $200 to play with - so very happy now.
Glad I went through the learning-curve anyway. I posted that chart mainly to help others consider internal vs external storage on a machine that isn’t writing all the time. I think internal size wins there.
I definitely got caught up in a retail-therapy tech-frenzy with the OWC 1M2, and RAZER hub, and was a little excitably impulsive after getting the fast base Mini M4. Throwing unnecessary peripherals at it like mad. Only thankful I didn’t have a Pro with TB5! Lol

 

[Cape Dave]

256GB MAY be enough. But the problem is, the question should be, "Is 165GB enough? Because the OS takes up what, 30GB or so? And then you need some empty space so that the ssd does not bork itself. So, is 165GB enough?

 

[bzgnyc2]

256GB MAY be enough. But the problem is, the question should be, "Is 165GB enough? Because the OS takes up what, 30GB or so? And then you need some empty space so that the ssd does not bork itself. So, is 165GB enough?

Agree as mentioned previously, take 80% of the internal drive's capacity and subtract 50GB and that's what's left on the internal drive for the user and 3rd-party apps. The latter of which may be a few hundred to a few GB (e.g. MS Office) or 100s of GB+ (most commonly games). For 256GB storage internal, that's means the 150GB left may be plenty or may not even hold the primary app.

That's of course just the internal. Someone who deals with lots of very large files may not need a large internal drive because they already have a plan to keep all those files external.

And if the work is just browsing and typical office documents, 100 GB remaining after apps could be fine. You have to write a lot pages in Word to fill that up. Or it could go very quickly with RAW photos, videos, large datasets, and/or VMs.

As someone else summarized, the answer to whether 256GB internal is enough is "it depends..."

 

[Meedoss]

Interesting that the base Mini M4 is slower with 1TB than a 512GB. That’s why I say 24GB/512GB is the sweet spot

You mean 16/1tb is slower than 16/512? What about 24/1tb v 24/512?
Where are you getting this from?

 

[Meedoss]

Is 512gb enough if you have used 260 gb now. I don’t want externals would just get 1tb.

 

[Ifti]

With the way external NVMe SSD prices are rising, they are starting to make even Apple SSD Upgrade prices look 'decent'!

Whether 256GB is enough comes down to personal use case - I went with 1TB in my Mac Studio, but I rarely go over 150GB [if ever] and have plenty of fast TB5 external storage too. Personally, I would always go with 512GB as an absolute minimum for an internal drive.

 

[grad]

Is 256gb SSD enough?

Short answer: no, it isn't
Long answer: no, it is not

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

Plus you need to leave some space for macOS updates and it's generally a good idea not to run SSD at 100% capacity.

Practically speaking I would assume 250GB internal storage translates to about 150GB for the user. Of which a surprising amount these days will just be used for data cached from elsewhere. On the flip side, basic office productivity work easily sits within a few 10s GB or less (assuming lots of image or video or large datasets are not involved).

So 250GB can be a lot more than someone needs or not nearly enough...

I forgot about the macOS updates…

The only way I can see 256GB being enough is when you have external hard drives connected to it…

Does anyone know the price comparison between increasing the SSD on a Mac desktop versus buying external SSDs?

It might be cheaper to buy the 256GB and then plugin SSDs/HDDs externally and then keep the external drives connected 24/7???

EDIT: I just checked and the prices on Amazon are very reasonable. It seems like it’s much better value to buy a 256GB Mac desktop and then plugin multiple external drives:

1TB external ssds are only around:$115….

And others: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=1tb+ssd

You could just use the 256GB SSD exclusively for running macOS and installing macOS updates and then use the external drives for everything else.

A few heavily used apps could be installed on the Mac internal drive but keep the vast majority of apps installed on the external drives?

 

[bzgnyc2]

I forgot about the macOS updates…

The only way I can see 256GB being enough is when you have external hard drives connected to it…

Does anyone know the price comparison between increasing the SSD on a Mac desktop versus buying external SSDs?

The economics are not quite as in favor of external SSD as they were due to the explosion in 3rd-party SSD (and RAM) prices but they still favor an external SSD (putting aside other issues) at the 1TB+ level.

It might be cheaper to buy the 256GB and then plugin SSDs/HDDs externally and then keep the external drives connected 24/7???

EDIT: I just checked and the prices on Amazon are very reasonable. It seems like it’s much better value to buy a 256GB Mac desktop and then plugin multiple external drives:

Yes that will save money for a lot of people / use cases. For this aspect of configuring the storage for a desktop, I'd break buyers into these groups:

-Only needs 256 GB locally (small files and/or basically using computer as a fancy ChromeBook and/or heavy use of iCloud): easy, done
-Needs 512 GB but not more: either your model comes with it already or just pay the $200 upgrade
-Needs 1TB: either internal or external could be justified based on other factors
-2TB-8TB: really hard to justify paying a premium for Apple's internal storage
>8TB: you need a plan that is very you-specific

1TB external ssds are only around:$115….

And others: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=1tb+ssd

You could just use the 256GB SSD exclusively for running macOS and installing macOS updates and then use the external drives for everything else.

Yes that is what I do on my Mini. Family members' laptops are fine with 256GB internal as well as they just don't have a lot of files (local, that they created -- their hard drives do cache a lot of mail, messages, game files, etc).

A few heavily used apps could be installed on the Mac internal drive but keep the vast majority of apps installed on the external drives?

Yes and I'd say it's only really games and a few other select applications that are worth moving external. I also bet that most people (but perhaps not most MacRumors people) just don't have that many apps.

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

-Only needs 256 GB locally (small files and/or basically using computer as a fancy ChromeBook and/or heavy use of iCloud): easy, done

Thank you for your reply!

256GB just seems absurdly low. I remember buying my Mac Mini mid2011 and even the base model came with a 512GB HDD.... which is literally 15 years ago 😳

 

[b0fh666]

1TB is my bare minimum.

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

1TB is my bare minimum.

Thank you for your reply!

The problem is that you're paying a premium to get that 1TB internal SSD...😢 😢 😢 😢 It seems so much better to just buy a 512GB internal SSD and then plugin multiple USB HDD's or some other form of external storage...

 

[EugW]

In the past I used to say 128 GB was enough. And then as macOS matured, it wasn’t.
Then later on I used to say 256 GB was enough. And then as macOS matured, it wasn’t.

The problem is over time macOS accumulates junk files, and it also stores multimedia message files locally on the Mac if you have Messages linked to your Mac. iCloud does NOT dynamically manage storage of those iMessage multimedia files like it does with other applications, meaning that Messages slowly eats away at your disk space. If you only ever send text messages, that’s fine, but my wife would share video files through Messages with friends and family, and those eat up space fast as a copy of each get stored on her Mac’s SSD.

I remember with a 256 GB MacBook Air, I had to clean out my wife’s SSD once or twice a year due to accumulated macOS junk and Messages multimedia files, even though she is a very light user overall with very little other data stored locally. I remember sometimes macOS System Data was around 100 GB alone. It was a major pain. After moving her to a 512 GB MacBook Air, the System Data can still get bloated, but the drive is large enough that I don’t have to worry about it anymore… at least for now.

On my own M4 Mac mini, I have a 512 GB internal drive, but an external 4 TB data drive, as well as an additional 4 TB Time Machine drive. I had an M1 Mac mini before with 1 TB internal drive, but 1 TB was a really awkward size for me. It was not enough to house my data plus Photos Library, but after moving my Photos Library to an external SSD, 1 TB became way too big. Without the Photos Library I only need about 250 GB, so I’d have over 700 GB free on a 1 TB Mac. So, when I upgraded to the M4, I downgraded the storage to 512 GB.

 

[ivnj]

It's plenty.

Not for everyone. One guy here said he has 226.11gb worth of apps. It depends who you ask.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Not for everyone. One guy here said he has 226.11hb worth of apps. It depends who you ask.

hectobytes?

 

[ivnj]

hectobytes?

Sorry I meant to say GB. I edited.

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

In the past I used to say 128 GB was enough. And then as macOS matured, it wasn’t.
Then later on I used to say 256 GB was enough. And then as macOS matured, it wasn’t.

Thank you for your reply!

Is it safe to say macOS will only need more and more hard drive space in the future?

How hard is it to install macOS apps on an external USB HDD? Doesn't this create problems? I was thinking of just installing the macOS OS and apps ONLY and leave the external USB HDD for videos, documents, photos etc etc but not files that are tied to macOS functioning.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Is it safe to say macOS will only need more and more hard drive space in the future?"

I'd say the possibility of that is... 100%.

256gb IS NOT "enough".
512 will be ok... but you may be dealing with constricted space sooner rather than later.

1tb... that's better.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Is it safe to say macOS will only need more and more hard drive space in the future?

That's the long-term trend...it is possible that macOS 27 slims down if they drop Universal binaries and if not I would be surprised if macOS 28 isn't slimmer given that it will fully drop support for Rosetta2.

How hard is it to install macOS apps on an external USB HDD? Doesn't this create problems?

I would not do that with recent versions of macOS. They have been designed for APFS which has been optimized for SSD since ~ Mojave/Catalina.

An external USB SSD should be fine. In this day and age I would recommend instead a TB3+ (including USB4+) SSD. Given the price of SSD these days, going less than TB3+ doesn't make sense to me unless you already have the hardware.

I was thinking of just installing the macOS OS and apps ONLY and leave the external USB HDD for videos, documents, photos etc etc but not files that are tied to macOS functioning.

I keep all data external on my desktops but I prefer to keep macOS on the internal storage. I try to keep 3rd-party apps outside the macOS installation if possible. Some applications -- like recent versions of MS Office -- like to be in /Applications.

 

[EugW]

Thank you for your reply!

Is it safe to say macOS will only need more and more hard drive space in the future?

How hard is it to install macOS apps on an external USB HDD? Doesn't this create problems? I was thinking of just installing the macOS OS and apps ONLY and leave the external USB HDD for videos, documents, photos etc etc but not files that are tied to macOS functioning.

My preference for ease of use and easier macOS management is to keep my apps on the internal SSD but to keep some data sets / documents on a fast Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 external SSD. The biggest in my case is the Photos Library, and fortunately Photos has been specifically designed to seamlessly and easily work with external drives.

This includes third party apps. I install most third party apps in the Applications folder on the internal drive if that is the default since a few of them may sometimes misbehave in various ways when installed elsewhere. In the very least it makes it easier to understand the help files for some apps since they’re written assuming you have a default installation setup.