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MBA SSDs Used To Capacity

peglegjack

peglegjack

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 30, 2011
436
252
Brooklyn, NY
This is probably a bit of a newbie question but:

Do Macbook Air SSDs have the same issue of slowing down once they reach capacity? I don't know if the speeds on the new models make any difference on that end, but I'd like to get the 128 GB model if I can. At the same time, I'd hate to freak out about the idea of going under 40GB free space in fear of slowing down the computer. Either way, I'd probably just use a portable hard drive if it came to it, but I just think it'd be good to know these things.

Thanks
 
Whether it be a HDD or SSD, it's not a good idea to max out the storage on your internal drive. OS X needs space for caches, logs, app work space, paging, etc. You should always keep at least 10-20% of your drive space free, for good performance.
 
GGJstudios said:
Whether it be a HDD or SSD, it's not a good idea to max out the storage on your internal drive. OS X needs space for caches, logs, app work space, paging, etc. You should always keep at least 10-20% of your drive space free, for good performance.
Click to expand...

So on the new MBA with a 128 GB HD, you probably shouldn't go under 25 GB or so?
 
peglegjack said:
So on the new MBA with a 128 GB HD, you probably shouldn't go under 25 GB or so?
Click to expand...
That would be good planning. It also allows things to grow a bit and gives you space to add more stuff until you can offload something to an external drive.

I always recommend that people look at what applications they want to install. Some of them are fairly large and may indicate a 256GB SSD would be the wise choice.

Also consider fully removing Garageband, iMovie and even iPhoto if you're not going to use them. That will free up a decent chunk of disk space.
 
I'm running with 12GB free on a 128 GB SSD and not having issues. Was recording 2 audio tracks through Logic last night and it worked *shrug*. I've been down as low as 5GB but that's usually after downloading all the iOS dev updates and before I move the installers/dmg files.
 
Bear said:
That would be good planning. It also allows things to grow a bit and gives you space to add more stuff until you can offload something to an external drive.

I always recommend that people look at what applications they want to install. Some of them are fairly large and may indicate a 256GB SSD would be the wise choice.

Also consider fully removing Garageband, iMovie and even iPhoto if you're not going to use them. That will free up a decent chunk of disk space.
Click to expand...

monolingual ftw!
 
Bear said:
I'm not sure it's a win. If you remove the wrong thing, OS X updates can have issues. Also how little space are you really talking about?
Click to expand...

a couple gigs. and it's pretty simple - hard to imagine "removing the wrong thing?"
 
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