Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Performance of 256 vs 512 SSD?
- Thread starter silentsim
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Larger drives typically have faster read and write speeds. That's definitely a factor of performance.
Incorrect, actually. Higher capacity = more NAND flash chips = more access for the controller to do more at once, in simple terms. Higher capacities often run at higher speeds due to this.
Very true - though I'm super curious just what specific real world workflow would show a truly discernible difference in user experience given the speeds of these things.
It'll be a choice between realy fast and really really fast.
I don't know what you do with your Mac, but 256GB isnt much storage. It was the first limit I hit with my (2012) MBA. Remeber it cant be upgraded later. At least wit my MBA I was able to put in a 256GB SD Card.
512GB is probably worth it not so much for speed, but for space/future proofing. But you will now your usage better than me!
I don't know what you do with your Mac, but 256GB isnt much storage. It was the first limit I hit with my (2012) MBA. Remeber it cant be upgraded later. At least wit my MBA I was able to put in a 256GB SD Card.
512GB is probably worth it not so much for speed, but for space/future proofing. But you will now your usage better than me!
Incorrect, larger SSDs will perform drastically better. Apple states only the 2 TB storage in the M1 models will get 3.3 GB/sec read speeds
It’s way cheaper to add an external SSD drive than it is to give Apple 200 dollars for an extra measly 256 gb of storage. A 1 TB SSD USB C drive is 129.
A removable drive is convenience. I can use mine literally on any mac I own (or don't own). That's far more convenient than overpaying for storage that's limited to just one mac.
Different strokes for different folks, truly. I transitioned my workflow to being almost entirely external-based when external SSDs became cheap enough, and haven't looked back. Also makes switching computers (as I do often) much easier. For some people, though, internal storage is just going to be much more convenient - especially when dealing with a machine that only has two ports.
Wouldn't Apple's Cloud storage option be better in that case then? Also still cheaper than 500+ dollars to bump up to 1TB internal storage.
Larger SSD's typically have faster read/write speeds
For storage I went with what I consider the sweet spot for each, iPhone 12 mini 128GB, iPad Pro 256GB, and M1 Mac mini 1TB.
For storage I went with what I consider the sweet spot for each, iPhone 12 mini 128GB, iPad Pro 256GB, and M1 Mac mini 1TB.
It also has a great deal to do with where you're using the system.
Externals aren't a big deal sitting at a table or desk. They become far less convenient if you spend much time working with the laptop actually sitting in your lap in an airport/aircraft/bus/taxi/etc.
End of the day it's a cost / use-case / convenience tradeoff with the "best" solution being different for different folks.
Absolutely agreed. It all comes down to your use case.It also has a great deal to do with where you're using the system.
Externals aren't a big deal sitting at a table or desk. They become far less convenient if you spend much time working with the laptop actually sitting in your lap in an airport/aircraft/bus/taxi/etc.
End of the day it's a cost / use-case / convenience tradeoff with the "best" solution being different for different folks.
I think it fairly unlikely that in real world use much if any difference will be perceivable between the 256GB and 512GB SSDs, even if the latter are in fact faster, so really this is a straight choice about how much storage is desired.
I have found with SSDs that beyond a certain point it's other bottlenecks that seem to bite before the maximum transfer rate, unless you are regularly copying vast amounts of data to or from the SSD (although in that case I have found thermal throttling to be an issue so peak performance can drop off quite quickly).
As for which is the right choice, that's absolutely personal preference. Personally I go for as much on-board storage as I can afford, because I prefer to always have my stuff on me and not just in the cloud or on an external drive. I personally cannot conceive of having 256GB storage in a laptop costing four figures and cannot believe Apple still has it as their base configuration, but clearly others manage just fine on that.
I have found with SSDs that beyond a certain point it's other bottlenecks that seem to bite before the maximum transfer rate, unless you are regularly copying vast amounts of data to or from the SSD (although in that case I have found thermal throttling to be an issue so peak performance can drop off quite quickly).
As for which is the right choice, that's absolutely personal preference. Personally I go for as much on-board storage as I can afford, because I prefer to always have my stuff on me and not just in the cloud or on an external drive. I personally cannot conceive of having 256GB storage in a laptop costing four figures and cannot believe Apple still has it as their base configuration, but clearly others manage just fine on that.
I regularly use my Macs for five years. A larger internal drive is much cheaper than the cost of more iCloud storage AND and increased monthly cost of the faster home internet required to make using cloud storage useful as a drive replacement. Plus, cloud storage is useless as a Photoshop scratch disk.
I agree, I'm a hoarder and like having all my stuff with me. It can be a hard pill to swallow with apple pricing, when you consider how cheap SSD's have become, it's my biggest gripe with apple Ram/SSD pricing, and the fact that they are not upgradable.
Presumably the trade-off (between storage and portability) is different for someone who's getting a Mac Mini.
I'm leaning towards thinking that a Mini with 256GB attached to an external SSD would make more sense than paying Apple's extortionate rates for memory.
I'm leaning towards thinking that a Mini with 256GB attached to an external SSD would make more sense than paying Apple's extortionate rates for memory.
True, there's more flexibility with a largely stationary computer.
Still, consider what you're doing and how fast you need to access that data. External SSDs approaching the speed of the internal SSD start to get expensive... Slower speeds of course are less expensive.
OWC Express 4M2
Four M.2 SSD bays with pure adrenaline inducing Thunderbolt 3 performance.
The 512GB SSD has read and write speeds of about 2900-3100 MB/s on my MacBook Air.
I saw a Mini M1 teardown and it had two SSD chips in different sizes. I was wondering if it was to partition page/swap on the smaller SSD and most data on the larger one.
You are also getting one less GPU core on the 256 vs. the 512GB model. I’m guessing the 7 GPU core M1 chips were found through binning (M1s that failed some check had a GPU core disabled). Maybe they failed under thermal load but did not fail when a GPU core was disabled, thus reducing thermal levels.