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MacBook Pro Retina 128GB or 256GB

D

Deep12

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 13, 2015
7
0
Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks
 
Deep12 said:
Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks
Click to expand...

256GB.

The 128GB is too small and its performance is pathetic compared to the 256GB.

That said, I've replied to your other thread and you should be considering a 15", since you're doing electrical/computer engineering with AutoCAD and an IDE.
 
Deep12 said:
Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks
Click to expand...

256 GB, like I said on the other thread.
 
It's entirely possible to squeeze a Windows VM or a Bootcamp partition on the 128GB SSD, plus a few HD movies, several gigabytes of music, three or four large apps and that's about it. Consider yourself warned :D
 
Deep12 said:
Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD. My main use of the laptop would be is for school purposes, so it will only contain school related files, all the things like pictures, videos and music will stay on could or external hard drive. BUT. I am planning to run parallel/VM/Bootcamp for Windows on the Mac. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks
Click to expand...

With bootcamp or VM I always recommend more storage because they eat GB's for breakfast.

As for photos, music, that depends on how much you have and if you want it with you at all times. I prefer to store that on external storage but that's just my way of doing things.
 
Z3man said:
Do larger SSD's have better performance?
Click to expand...

In terms of the performance, you'll get around 300MB/s from the 128GB version i can sometime get 330MB/s (black magic stress tester, not real world) where as on the larger versions (256) its approaching double that (530MB/s) in my experience. My latest 512GB runs around 700MB/s. I have a theory as to why - the number of paths/chips within the device. But i'd certainly agree there is a performance difference. Will you notice it? depends, if you have loads or RAM and don't process large files - probably not. All depends on what your are doing.

Size question - i use external NAS storage for everything, so i still have around 90GB left on the 128GB version.
 
Last edited:
AFEPPL said:
In terms of the performance, you'll get around 300MB/s from the 128GB version i can sometime get 330MB/s (black magic stress tester, not real world) where as on the larger versions (256) its approaching double that (530MB/s) in my experience. My latest 512GB runs around 700MB/s. I have a theory as to why - the number of paths/chips within the device. But i'd certainly agree there is a performance difference. Will you notice it? depends, if you have loads or RAM and don't process large files - probably not. All depends on what your are doing.

Size question - i use external NAS storage for everything, so i still have around 90GB left on the 128GB version.
Click to expand...

My 256GB clocks in at 680MB/s writes and 720MB/s reads.

Your results look like you got a SanDisk variant, which perform slower than Samsung in writes.

I've the Samsung variant.

Meanwhile my 1TB reaches over 1000MB/s in both operations.
 
yjchua95 said:
My 256GB clocks in at 680MB/s writes and 720MB/s reads.

Your results look like you got a SanDisk variant, which perform slower than Samsung in writes.

I've the Samsung variant.

Meanwhile my 1TB reaches over 1000MB/s in both operations.
Click to expand...

My 512 GB is only slightly faster than your 256. Where did you get such a fast 1 TB?
 
Deep12 said:
Hey guys so I am planning to buy a MBP 13 inch. But I cant decide between getting 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD.
Click to expand...
I think you'll be finding the 128GB to be too small, and you'll have painted yourself in the corner. Go for the 256
 
yjchua95 said:
My 256GB clocks in at 680MB/s writes and 720MB/s reads.

Your results look like you got a SanDisk variant, which perform slower than Samsung in writes.

I've the Samsung variant.

Meanwhile my 1TB reaches over 1000MB/s in both operations.
Click to expand...

You are correct, the device is a SD0256F, i was talking about writes though - not reads. Reads are around 711 peak, but are around 670/90 mostly. saying that its just run a 724!!!

Best I saw on the 128 over a 1min cycle was 321/MB write, 448/MB read
The 512 device was 715/MB write and 805/MB these device are both samsung.

So, yeah, theres a measurable synthetic difference between the sizes.
 
I would recommend getting at least 256 GB of storage, since it's considered a non-servicable component in the MacBook Pro with Retina display you'd be better off having more storage rather than running out of room a few months down the road and having to deal with external disks.

Just my two cents. :)
 
I love the 128GB option for a secondary machine. If I had an iMac for the horsepower and storage and an MBA for on the go, I probably wouldn't need more than 128GB on the latter. Heck, I'm barely getting the 16GB on my iPad and iPhone full.

A friend of mine bought his first Mac last fall and despite everyone's advice went with the 128GB. He calculated his SSD needs and - as he is an avid photographer - came up with an enormous amount, way past even the top tier 512GB option.
With this in mind, he decided to rather constantly hook up a 1TB external drive for his Lightroom and iTunes libraries and save some money by only buying 128GB internal storage. Mind you, this works for him, because he doesn't use a lot of different software and the data that's eating up his storage can easily be stored and used via an external drive.

I can't imagine any scenarios other than these two, in which 128GB would be sufficient. Myself, I'm struggling with 256GB on my main machine.
 
AFEPPL said:
You are correct, the device is a SD0256F, i was talking about writes though - not reads. Reads are around 711 peak, but are around 670/90 mostly. saying that its just run a 724!!!

Best I saw on the 128 over a 1min cycle was 321/MB write, 448/MB read
The 512 device was 715/MB write and 805/MB these device are both samsung.

So, yeah, theres a measurable synthetic difference between the sizes.
Click to expand...

My 13" rMBP with 256 GB SM0256F SSD scores around 675 MB/s for writes and 725 MB/s for reads. That write speed you mentioned with the Sandisk is quite a disappointment.
 
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Day to day, you don't notice much difference between the 3, the 8GB/128 version is slower, but unless you are doing something large files they all work fine.
 
AFEPPL said:
Day to day, you don't notice much difference between the 3, the 8GB/128 version is slower, but unless you are doing something large files they all work fine.
Click to expand...
Performance perhaps, but storage needs, the 128GB can and will be getting tight imo.
 
So which is better out of a 256 or 512 balancing cost and storage. Is 256 really enough?
 
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