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Overcoming small 128 Gb storage

S

ScratchyMoose

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2008
223
15
London
Hi Everyone,

I've got quite a few desktop macs, iPads and an iPhone, so when my girlfriend asked me to figure out which laptop she should buy, I thought easy.

She's got tons and tons of photo's - around 0.5 Tb I'd guess, with some music and documents too. She uses it for easy stuff such as word-processing / web / email ... nothing taxing.

So I went to the Apple store on line, and there's only 1 laptop that has a HDD rather than an SSD? That's the 13 inch macbook pro for over £1k. Which is a lot to drop on a laptop that she doesn't really do much with. And only to utilise a £40 0.5Tb HDD!

Questions:
Am I right that the 13" MBP is the only thing to have (not crazy crazy prices) 0.5 Tb storage?
How do you overcome the small 128Gb storage - attaching external HDDs seems to be a bit clunky. Dropbox for photos?
Does a mac with only 4Gb memory run ok?

Thanks for any help
 
Dont buy the 13" cMBP, it so out of date...
you can find card reader extensions, but the are at their highest 256gb at the moment and comes at $100+ i think.
is the photos some that she uses often or are they just there for keeping?
 
slater-k said:
Hi Everyone,

I've got quite a few desktop macs, iPads and an iPhone, so when my girlfriend asked me to figure out which laptop she should buy, I thought easy.

She's got tons and tons of photo's - around 0.5 Tb I'd guess, with some music and documents too. She uses it for easy stuff such as word-processing / web / email ... nothing taxing.

So I went to the Apple store on line, and there's only 1 laptop that has a HDD rather than an SSD? That's the 13 inch macbook pro for over £1k. Which is a lot to drop on a laptop that she doesn't really do much with. And only to utilise a £40 0.5Tb HDD!

Questions:
Am I right that the 13" MBP is the only thing to have (not crazy crazy prices) 0.5 Tb storage?
How do you overcome the small 128Gb storage - attaching external HDDs seems to be a bit clunky. Dropbox for photos?
Does a mac with only 4Gb memory run ok?

Thanks for any help
Click to expand...

I really, really don't recommend buying the 13 inch MacBook Pro that you've referenced. It's not just a matter of storage and RAM - that model hasn't been updated since June 2012. It doesn't have a Retina display, and the graphics and processor are both extremely out of date. It's bad value for money and it'll age quickly, because it's already very old.

I have a 128GB Retina MacBook Pro and while it isn't exactly a lot of storage, it's manageable. As she mainly uses it for web and word processing, it should be enough, and I recommend uploading all her photos to the cloud. Google Photos is arguably the best option if you're willing to sacrifice image quality slightly, or not at all if the photos were taken with a phone - it provides unlimited storage for photos and videos below a certain resolution, and the apps and website are great. If she doesn't mind only accessing her photos when she's online, that would be a good solution. Alternatively, she could upload them to Flickr (1TB free storage), or a service that's not made for photos (like OneDrive or Google Drive) that has cheap storage upgrade plans.

If she doesn't want to upload her photos to the cloud, there are other alternatives to expand the storage of the MacBook Pro. They're not too cheap, but you can buy SD cards that go flush with the MBP's body and effectively expand the internal storage. Or if you want it to be cheap, you can get a tiny USB 3.0 stick and store the photos on there; 128GB versions are around £25 in the UK so it's extremely affordable, though you'd have to use several (so using Google Photos/Flickr is my main recommendation).

Both methods of storing photos have their drawbacks, but there's one point to emphasise - please please please don't buy the non-Retina MacBook Pro. I wouldn't pay nearly as much as £1k for it; I wouldn't even spend £500 on it.
 
Thanks guys, and yikes ... 2012! You need say no more.

Thanks for the Google photos tip - just checked it out and it's free!

So yeah, I think that's me convinced!

What's the general consensus on memory - 4 or 8. 4 sounds just like asking for problems no?

Cheers :)
 
slater-k said:
Thanks guys, and yikes ... 2012! You need say no more.

Thanks for the Google photos tip - just checked it out and it's free!

So yeah, I think that's me convinced!

What's the general consensus on memory - 4 or 8. 4 sounds just like asking for problems no?

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

The Retina MacBook Pros have a minimum of 8GB RAM, which you can optionally upgrade to 16GB. It's not worth the upgrade unless she's a video editor or gamer, or heavily uses Photoshop, so 8GB should be enough - I've never run out and I usually have a lot open.
 
If you want a Mac buy a used 2012 13" Macbook pro for $500 USD or so. It is the same machine that you Apple it trying to sell you for 1,000 quid. Get a 256 GB SSD for $100 USD (or 500 GB for $160 USD). Max memory to 16GB for $50 USD. Install it yourself or take it to a local shop.

You will end up with a unit that will run circles around the Macbook pro 13 that apple is selling for 1,000 pounds.
 
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If it isn't going to be used that much, I would really consider PC. If you go new, you'll end up with $1200+ to have a MacBook with that much storage. You could spend $400-$600 on a notebook (or on a desktop). Yes, the SSD in the MacBook would make it snappier, no question about it. But to me, $600 is an awfully large premium for a computer that I will have to expand to fit my needs and not use that much.

The cloud is a valid option, but unless you have a really good connection, even a slow hard drive would probably give you faster access to your content.

As much as I hate Windows 10, I think it is a better option in this case.
 
jerryk said:
If you want a Mac buy a used 2012 13" Macbook pro for $500 USD or so. It is the same machine that you Apple it trying to sell you for 1,000 quid. Get a 256 GB SSD for $100 USD (or 500 GB for $160 USD). Max memory to 16GB for $50 USD. Install it yourself or take it to a local shop.

You will end up with a unit that will run circles around the Macbook pro 13 that apple is selling for 1,000 pounds.
Click to expand...
That's what I did a year ago when I got my cMBP, there's absolutely no way that I would buy a brand new one. It's still a very nice computer when upgraded though, and I'd still keep mine around for years if it weren't for the fact that I now have a powerful PC laptop and have less of a need for a more powerful Mac (which is why I recently picked up an rMB).
 
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Thanks Everyone!
So ...
A Mac - yeah, it's got to be really, just to fit in with her iPhone, our Mac based house, and my being able to fix things on Mac but not PC. Shame, as the cost difference is really quite large.

8Gb memory - that's what I'll go for.

2012 MBP, and do up ... what's holding me back here is just the age of the machine itself. It could be 4 years old, and have components that are nearing death. Cheaper tho, but quite a bit of hassle if something goes wrong.

Refurb:

Refurbished 12-inch MacBook 1.1GHz Dual-core Intel Core M - Space Grey
Originally released April 2015
8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
£759


Refurbished 11.6-inch MacBook Air 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Originally released March 2015
8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory

256GB PCIe-based flash storage
£829


Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Air 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Originally released April 2016
8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory
128GB PCIe-based flash storage £719



Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Air 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Originally released April 2016
8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory
256GB PCIe-based flash storage £849


Refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro 2.7GHz Dual-core Intel i5 with Retina Display
Originally released March 2015
8GB of 1866MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory
128GB PCIe-based flash storage1 £849

I think I'd either go for the £719 1.6 GHz or the £849 2.7 GHz. Because of the price difference, I'd probably opt for the cheaper of the two. She's only browsing and light pic editing (thanks for the Google photos tip!), so that'd probably be worth the savings.

Thanks again guys :)
 
But if her pictures is just there for safekeeping, an external HHD would be great.
My set-up when editing pictures was always having all the data on a USB 3 external HHD. This was due to a 256GB SSD which I on good days used maybe 60% of. Keep in mind i also had games and and videos stored, so if that had not been the case i might have used 30-40%
 
My advice:

DON'T buy a [non-pro] Macbook. They're underpowered.
ANY MacBook Pro -- even the "classic" 2012 model -- will be better.

I would suggest that you recommend to your friend that she should do some segregating with her photos. That is, separate the "must-have" stuff from those that she seldom views. Then, store the seldom-viewed photos in their own library on an EXTERNAL drive.

Same with videos.

On the modern MacBook Pros, storage space is at a premium and can get VERY expensive if you spring for the 1tb flash version. Not worth it in my opinion. Of course, your opinion may be different.
 
You might consider something like the JetDrive Lite as a (relatively) cheap way to expand storage for things that don't require high speed writing and retrieval. This is a small SD card that fits almost invisibly into the SD card slot on the Mac. Photos should be absolutely fine on there and an iTunes library is probably ok too. I just ordered a 128Gb for my 15" rMBP for around $65 - be sure to order the correct model for the Mac you get as they differ in size.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K73NWK0

(I am not affiliated with this seller or with JetDrive)
 
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