New gen SSD, how much free space?

[Mais78]

Thinking about selling my Mac Mini to buy the new MacBook Pro 13.
At the moment I am using 47GB in OSX and 43GB in Bootcamp, unlikely to use much more in the future (maybe an extra 5GB in each environment?). If I buy the entry model with 128GB and split 50/50 for OSX and Windows, is the free space (17GB in OSX and 21GB in Windows) enough to keep max speed?
thanks

 

[duervo]

Won't leave much room for apps or anything else, on either side. Also, local Time Machine snapshots will eat up whatever free space is left on the OS X side, so run this from a Terminal session before you Bootcamp it:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Remember: Doing this places more importance on making sure that you have Time Machine backups to an external location configured and turned on.

Personally, if it were me wanting to Bootcamp, 256GB is the smallest I would even consider, and I would probably actually get the 512GB.

Also, it shouldn't affect speed doing what you want. You will just have to monitor free space closer than if you go with a larger SSD.

 

[Mais78]

Won't leave much room for apps or anything else, on either side. Also, local Time Machine snapshots will eat up whatever free space is left on the OS X side, so run this from a Terminal session before you Bootcamp it:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Remember: Doing this places more importance on making sure that you have Time Machine backups to an external location configured and turned on.

Personally, if it were me wanting to Bootcamp, 256GB is the smallest I would even consider, and I would probably actually get the 512GB.

I cannot imagine anything else that I would want to install. I have time machine and all data (basically 500GB of pictures) on an external drive always connected.
What is the minimum to leave free? Someone says even 1MB on new drives is fine, some other say 30%. I think that under any scenario I would have at least 10GB free, is that enough? Is it really worth paying 20% more to get the 256GB?

 

[duervo]

I cannot imagine anything else that I would want to install. I have time machine and all data (basically 500GB of pictures) on an external drive always connected.
What is the minimum to leave free? Someone says even 1MB on new drives is fine, some other say 30%. I think that under any scenario I would have at least 10GB free, is that enough? Is it really worth paying 20% more to get the 256GB?

If you're certain that you will always have at least 10GB free, then you should be fine.

Even if you have Time Machine running to back things up, it will still create those local snapshots, which can easily consume the rest of your free space (especially since you won't have much of it to begin with.) It won't happen right away (happens gradually over time as additional snapshots are created), but one day you will probably log on and notice that you have run out of space "all of a sudden."

1MB free on a drive is not wise. It's always been the case to leave 20-25% free. 30% is probably overkill, and there are some opinions on "over-provisioning" with SSDs too (where you leave a portion of the SSD unpartitioned), but that depends on the SSD and other factors ... there is no one rule to rule them all (LOTR ref ... bonus!) Best answer regarding over-provisioning is "it depends."

 

[Mais78]

If you're certain that you will always have at least 10GB free, then you should be fine.

Even if you have Time Machine running to back things up, it will still create those local snapshots, which can easily consume the rest of your free space (especially since you won't have much of it to begin with.) It won't happen right away (happens gradually over time as additional snapshots are created), but one day you will probably log on and notice that you have run out of space "all of a sudden."

1MB free on a drive is not wise. It's always been the case to leave 20-25% free. 30% is probably overkill, and there are some opinions on "over-provisioning" with SSDs too (where you leave a portion of the SSD unpartitioned), but that depends on the SSD and other factors ... there is no one rule to rule them all (LOTR ref ... bonus!) Best answer regarding over-provisioning is "it depends."

Local snapshots? I thought all snapshots were created and saved on the designeted TM drive, i.e. the external one in my case.

 

[duervo]

Local snapshots? I thought all snapshots were created and saved on the designeted TM drive, i.e. the external one in my case.

Unfortunately not

OS X Yosemite - About Local Snapshots

It's "supposed" to clean them up when free space gets below 20%, but I've learned the hard way that it doesn't always clean it up ... especially if the space is consumed quicker than it can detect that it's below 20% free.

 

[Agent-P]

Local snapshots? I thought all snapshots were created and saved on the designeted TM drive, i.e. the external one in my case.

TM does both. The ones saved on your external drive will be saved much longer. The purpose of the local snapshots is for those "oh *****" moments when you need to recover an older version of a file immediately.

 

[Mais78]

Unfortunately not

OS X Yosemite - About Local Snapshots

It's "supposed" to clean them up when free space gets below 20%, but I've learned the hard way that it doesn't always clean it up ... especially if the space is consumed quicker than it can detect that it's below 20% free.

Thanks, didn't know. Just Mac laptops seem to have this. On the other hand the link says you can disable them.
How much space do they take if your full installation is 40GB?

 

[duervo]

Thanks, didn't know. Just Mac laptops seem to have this. On the other hand the link says you can disable them.
How much space do they take if your full installation is 40GB?

"It depends"

Change Rate is a common term used to predict storage consumption of backups. The higher a change rate, the larger the "incrementals" will be. From the sounds of it, for you ... it's probably going to be very, very low.

Honestly, I'd just disable them and be done with it. I disabled them on my MBP ages ago.

 

[Mais78]

"It depends"

Change Rate is a common term used to predict storage consumption of backups. The higher a change rate, the larger the "incrementals" will be. From the sounds of it, for you ... it's probably going to be very, very low.

Honestly, I'd just disable them and be done with it. I disabled them on my MBP ages ago.

Thanks, leaning towards the 128GB then.

 

[Mais78]

Thanks, leaning towards the 128GB then.

Ehmmm... I cant get the
128GB for £999 with 3 years warranty (i.e. Official UK price but extra 2 years warranty)
Or
256GB for £1,109 with 1 year warranty (£99 discount to official price)

Thoughts?

The 20pct free is space is to be measured on the full size of the drive or the partition? E.g. If i have a 100GB drive, 50 to osx and 50 to bootcamp, i have to leave 20gb free in each partition or 10?

 

[geoelectric]

New gen SSD, how much free space?

It's probably partition. I think you're so close to the edge though that I'd upgrade. Otherwise you're going to have to worry about it. Upgrading means not worrying about it, and a little headroom if your predictions are wrong re: space usage. I put a pretty big premium on not worrying.

 

[Mais78]

It's probably partition. I think you're so close to the edge though that I'd upgrade. Otherwise you're going to have to worry about it. Upgrading means not worrying about it, and a little headroom if your predictions are wrong re: space usage. I put a pretty big premium on not worrying.

So...i m playing with the MBP 128, without local backup snapshots (11GB!) my OSX installation is 48GB (including every software I use and data). So out of 120GB capacity, I could do 70GB to OSX (30% free space) and 50GB to Bootcamp (used space is 37GB - with page file reduced from 8GB to 2GB - so 25% free space).
Plenty right? The only thing that grows over the years is my photo archive but it is on the external drive.

I could free up an additional 10GB by deleting the ipad and iphone apps saved in iTunes. Is there any point having and updating these mobile apps on the laptop/desktop? The only use I can think of is to restore iphone/ipad faster?

Without those I could have 32GB free in OSX on 70GB total. At that point the 128 is really plenty. I use the Windows partition just for Excel work.

 

[z31fanatic]

Ehmmm... I cant get the
128GB for £999 with 3 years warranty (i.e. Official UK price but extra 2 years warranty)
Or
256GB for £1,109 with 1 year warranty (£99 discount to official price)

Thoughts?

Definitely get the 256GB model. £110 is not a big difference and it will be well worth it.

 

[catean]

Without those I could have 32GB free in OSX on 70GB total. At that point the 128 is really plenty. I use the Windows partition just for Excel work.

What is the problem with Excel for MAC? I am thinking at Excel 2016 which is identical on Mac with the one in Windows.

 

[Mais78]

What is the problem with Excel for MAC? I am thinking at Excel 2016 which is identical on Mac with the one in Windows.

If you spent 20 years on Excel for Windows and know all the shortcuts by hearth, the Mac version is unusable. Windows version is better for me, even simple things like checking the content of a formula (you play with two fingers on F2 and Esc in Windows) becomes comlicated on Mac (Ctrl+U and Esc, so more keys and all over the keyboard).
Also Win Outlook is better. In OSX you cannot Control+C attachments in emails to copy elsewhere, big waste of time. I guess MS has no interest in making an OSX version that is as good.

Anyone has got any view on keeping the iphone/ipad apps on the laptop? Any point?

 

[Agent-P]

New gen SSD, how much free space?

Anyone has got any view on keeping the iphone/ipad apps on the laptop? Any point?

Like you mentioned, having local backups of the apps restores them faster. Also, if an app gets removed from the App Store (but you still have the local copy) you can reinstall it whenever you like.

But if you need the free space, there's no harm in deleting them. Just make sure you're making regular iCloud backups as it'll remember your installed apps and redownload them for you after a restore.

 

[Mais78]

Gents, if you install windows in virtualbox do you still need to leave free space for performance purposes or you can limit the virtual drive size to the size actually used?

 

[simonsi]

The 20pct free is space is to be measured on the full size of the drive or the partition? E.g. If i have a 100GB drive, 50 to osx and 50 to bootcamp, i have to leave 20gb free in each partition or 10?

Ensure 20% free on each partition based on the partitions size.

 

[Mais78]

Parallels takes less space??

I have installed W7 + office on bootcamp and it takes 29GB, after deleting the hybernation file (8GB) and reducing the virtual memory from 8GB to 2GB, otherwise it would be c.45.

In Parallels Win 10 + office takes only 13GB, without deleting the hybernation file and with a default virtual memory of 1.5GB.

How is that possible? Is it parallels or the size of Win 10 has been dramatically reduced?

With parallels 128gb becomes plenty to run both OS, plus i see that parallels takes only what it is using, so the unused ssd space is effectively shared with Mac. Is that correct?

 

[duervo]

Windows 10 uses compression on system files to decrease consumed disk space. Also, Windows 7 does not have the ability to erase the downloaded Windows Updates after they have been installed. All of those updates you may have installed are kept on the system. This gives you the ability to uninstall an update. Most would be fine with being able to delete the downloaded updates. If you feel that you are one of those people, then follow this:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/10/08/breaking-news-reduce-the-size-of-the-winsxs-directory-and-free-up-disk-space-with-a-new-update-for-windows-7-sp1-clients.aspx

NOTE: If you do this, you may want to look at taking a more active approach to using VM snapshots prior to installing updates. Once you are comfortable that an update did not break anything, then delete the snapshot. Failure to delete the snapshot in a timely manner will result in all of your disk space eventually being consumed by that growing snapshot.

 

[dubhe]

The fact you are thinking about 256 means you need 256. Either buy it from John Lewis and with 3 years warranty or from Apple with the discount.

 

[Mais78]

The fact you are thinking about 256 means you need 256. Either buy it from John Lewis and with 3 years warranty or from Apple with the discount.

It is really the others that make me think about the 256. I have installed OS X and all the apps I need (Office, Lr, PS etc) + Parallels, Windows 10, Office for Windows and I still have 53GB free, almost half of the hard disk...
Struggle to see the need for 256GB..