MacBook Air: Insufficient Storage?

[navaira]

This sounds great, but pricey: http://9to5mac.com/2015/12/10/tardisk-pear-review/

 

[oxfordguy]

Anything in the SD slot will prevent the laptop from entering standby mode. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202124

The are a number of workarounds for that, I have a Nifty Minidrive with a 64Gb SDHC card in my Macbook Air and don't have a problem with it not entering standby.

See:

http://blog.appgineers.de/post/101608761084/new-advanced-feature-for-nifty-minidrive-users
http://www.atpeaz.com/automaticlly-eject-external-disks-on-sleep-reconnect-after-os-x/

 

[navaira]

Thank you!!

 

[macbook_21]

Let's say I went with a 2014 MBA with 8 gb RAM vs 2015 MBA with 4 GB of RAM. Would there be any performance hit at all going with the 2014 or would the extra RAM mitigate against that?

 

[navaira]

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...etween-macbook-air-early-2014-early-2015.html

I am assuming you don't mean the high-end 2014 vs low-end 2015. They mention "modest improvements in performance, graphics performance, and connectivity". Personally I would prefer 8 GB RAM. Geekbench suggests speed improvement is <10%. I bought 8 GB RAM because I can see that becoming a bottleneck within a few years. I don't think I will ever say to myself "dang, of only my processor was 7% faster!!!!"

On the other hand though. Remember that the SSD on 2015 13" Air is crazy fast. It is not so on the 2014 machine. I think 4 GB with 2015 SSD might work as well – who cares about a swap file which is so fast you don't notice it exists. It's my personal opinion, YMMV, etc.

 

[macbook_21]

I'm just wondering if the ssd downgrade will impact the quality of hd streaming in any way. It's so buttery smooth on the '15, I don't want to give that up.

 

[macbook_21]

I got the 2013 11" i7/8gb/512gb for the same reason, so I could have my whole iTunes library. Problem is, my library has grown to over 1TB since then. A little over a year ago it became obvious that I was going to outgrow any kind of SSD, so I got the Mini as an iTunes server and freed up lots of room on the MBA. I keep the local iTunes library on the MBA pretty small most of the time, but have loaded it up a couple times while travelling.

I found this article useful regarding moving your library to an external device. http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/ Just be careful, because depending on your configuration, it's possible to corrupt your library if you start iTunes and the external device isn't available.

It works! Nice! All I had to do was restart itunes with 'option' after relabeling 'itunes music' (10.6) as itunes media.'(10.11).

Unfortunately, I've also discovered the right side usb3 port doesn't work with my external hard drive? Quite annoying.

 

[macbook_21]

The right side usb port is now cooperating with the external drive.

I am able to access the entirety of my iTunes library from the external drive.

Life is good.

However, I may have to repartition the drive so that I use a small portion of it as a time machine drive.

 

[J&JPolangin]

I just use a USB3 micro Sandisk 64Gb flash drive(s), they are cost effective (think I got them on an amazon deal for $25 shipped free with Prime) and my 11.6" MBA has no card slot anyway...one for music and one for other files.