Is 512GB SSD absolutely sufficient?

[HobeSoundDarryl]

If you are locked in on Mac and only Mac, your posts read like you need to jack the upgrades. If you can get enough RAM to minimize SWAP, you reduce the long-term risk of wearing out the internal SSD (and thus junking the Mac). So get more RAM since you've already found that things you do on the other computer uses SWAP. Else, you are gambling on a belief that you may wear out the Mac before you might like. Fans will proclaim impossible... but go read what fans assured about Fusion drives back in the day vs. all the posts about the SSD portion of Fusion drives failing. Fans won't provide warranty service on their assurances. They just want to help Apple sell-sell-sell whatever Apple wants people to buy now. Caveat emptor!

As to SSD, only you can answer your question. And it's a complicated question. Is 512GB enough now? Is it enough 3 years from now? How about 6 years from now? Again, your posts read like you demand a lot from your computers. You probably need a higher-specced machine. Maybe try to imagine the very MAX of what you can anticipate needing for life of device and then going for at least 1 tier above that for some cushion to hopefully cover what you can't anticipate.

With Mac, you are not really buying for now. You are buying for the last days you'll be using it... which is sometimes as much as 10+ years from now. Is 512GB sufficient for 2035? My guess is "probably not" without even knowing exactly what you do with your Mac.

If you are not married to Mac, you might want to go PC... where there is still great flexibility and much more competitive prices for RAM & SSD... farrrrrrr less expensive than what the lone, "company store" charges. Choose well and if you get to a point in 2027 or 2029 or 2032 where you need more RAM or more SSD, you can just add it instead of tossing the whole computer and having to buy another whole computer.

With price obviously & heavily influencing your decision-making, the same money will buy a LOT of PC vs. Mac. For example, I picked up an entire gaming PC with 32GB of RAM and 10TB of fast SSD for less than only the 8TB of SSD upgrade ALONE from Apple (not including the Mac- just the SSD upgrade). New computer budget will buy much more PC and the right one will be quite flexible should future needs evolve. If Apple pricing is going to drive you to buy too little Mac, you might reallocate the same budget towards plenty of PC.

 

[SkweeBop]

I can't imagine going below a 1TB drive in any machine I own, so I can stay compact and self-contained. I'd go for 2TB if I could afford it, but I can't.

 

[theluggage]

I saw swap being used when I was using one and only one Windows virtual machine.

Swap is there to be used.

The reading to take notice of is Memory Pressure which takes account how often data is being moved in and out of swap - which may start slowing down the system. If that’s high and things are grinding a bit slowly then maybe you’re short of RAM.

As for SSD size: you have a recent Mac, you know how much of it is used for system, applications and data. You know whether or not your working with large, 4k+ video projects that need the fastest SSDs or if you just have a big, “prerecorded” media library which will play happily from a NAS, SD card or cheap USB 3 external drive. You know if there’s a load of rubbish on there that you could get rid of. I’d say that you need a system SSD at least twice the size of your system/apps/temp files along with whatever personal files you want to keep on the main drive. You don’t want your system drive to ever get full, or it might start hitting performance.

Personally, I’d say that on a desktop 256GB is only good for “personal productivity” use - adding a few “pro” apps, large games or VMs will start to eat into it badly. 512GB will probably be OK for most uses if you’re going to supplement it with external storage for bulky files. On a laptop I think 1TB is a sensible minimum, given you really don’t want to mess with external drives on the road - although the flush-fitting SD card thing might work for you if you have a lot of static data that you need to read, but not update, on the road.

I’d always go for 1TB across the board (and just curse Apple for the cost of what is pretty much the default for remotely comparable PCs) - that has worked out fine for me, using external drives just for backups and bulky archives. At Apple prices, you’d need a good, specific, justification to go above 1TB internal. Of course, if you’re doing something like significant 4K video editing or training massive AI models you may need vast amounts of storage - but per-project externals may be the better solution for that.

Looks like the 256k+ external boot SSD is working for some, but I’d be wary of doing that just for the satisfaction of “beating Apple” - to me, relying on an external for boot just seems like something else to go wrong. Also, while it may be cheaper than Apple SSD, the faster TB SSD drives do cost money, while if you keep an internal 512 GB boot/applications drive, you may be OK with cheaper USB 3 externals for bulk storage.