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Retina 256GB owners...wish you bought 512GB?

My thoughts...

I replaced my 13" C2D MBP (2.26GHz mid-2009) with a 2.3/16/256 MBPR which arrived on Tuesday. Having had a couple of days with it I feel I have made the right choice:

(1) the old SSD which I had in my previous MBP runs at 150MB/s+ over USB3 to and from the MBPR, which means that any media I could wish to run will be to all intents and purposes as quick to load from there as from the internal SSD . So, for the £300 the bump to the 256 would have cost (allowing £100 for the 2.3->2.6) I could easily buy two 256Gb SSDs and USB3 caddies. Win.

(2) My main work machine, a late 2010 2.9GHz i7 iMac 27, has a 256Gb SSD and a 1Tb HDD in it. After 18 months of use, the SSD is still less than 60% full, and I could almost fit all that's on the 1Tb HDD in that remaining 40%. So my absolute data needs are currently well within 256Gb.

(3) I wouldn't want to store movies or music on my MBPR - it's really for work - and I would rather use the NAS drive (connected to the Mini) for these sorts of things as that way I can watch on the big TV.

Maybe, just maybe I might change my mind about this, but because USB3 (and I presume the Thunderbolt ports) are fast enough to allow effectively seamless external storage without obvious performance degradation, I'm not worried.
 
Nope, never :)

I store all my movies on my external hard drive. All my music and photos are fine on my Mac at the moment, still got 100GB free so I'm not worry at all :D

I'm so used to using 128GB on my MacBook Air, so I'm so happy to have 256GB now ;)
 
I currently own an ageing 1st gen white MacBook with a 320GB HD. I'm considering an upgrade to either a MBP 15" or a rMBP in September. I do an awful lot of music production and audio editing, and my HD is usually mostly full, playing with about 5-10 GB from the limit and constantly backing up old projects to DVD to free up space.

As a result, I've been worried about going for the rMBP simply because there is a limitation with storage. If I went for the non-retina MBP, I'd most likely be choosing a 750 GB HD, or even just a 500 GB and then upgrading it to 1 TB. At least with the upgradeable models they are more storage future-proof... In a couple of years they may be selling 2 TB 2.5" HDs, and it wouldn't be difficult to install one (in the same way that when I bought my MacBook, 100 GB was a large HD for a laptop!)

So it's quite relieving to find this thread and see that people seem quite happy with 256 GB. I'm sure that with a bit of tidying up (and using the cloud more), I could sort out my mess of a hard drive and fit more comfortably on a smaller drive. What annoys me is how Apple are selling a non-upgradeable machine without more flexible options. I'd be happy with a 2.3 GHz processor (according to the benchmarks it still kicks ass), but the only way I can go for a 512 GB flash drive is by buying the more expensive 2.6 GHz model... Which, for the extra cost, is not such good value. I believe this is a deliberate ploy by Apple to make more money off their high-end users.

Because of the already-high price tag, I feel like I can't afford not to buy one that isn't future-proof. So if I get an rMBP, I'd most likely go for the 2.6/16/512 model (768 is waaaay too much more money). So it's either that, or the hi-res 15" MBP 2.3/8/500 (because I can quite easily upgrade the RAM and HD myself).

I'd like to think I could fit all my stuff onto a 256 GB drive, but I wouldn't like to spend the best part of £2K before realising it's too late to get more...
 
Are externals not an option? I have several. One for my music (and a backup one for it) and I got one for use as a time machine. I'm going from 160 to 256, so I the extra space will be a breath of fresh air, but I don't plan on doing away with externals. I'll simply be less apt to carry my music one on me.
 
i have 256GB its enough for me i dont have video pictures or mp3 files.
i only use excel and mail documents now i have used 70 GB :)
 
Admittedly, thanks to iTunes Match things have got a lot better... This is another clever ploy by Apple to shift towards the lower-capacity flash drives without annoying people too much.

My other big storage-muncher is all the podcasts I have downloaded to iTunes and not yet listened to... Thankfully they've introduced the Podcasts app for iOS, but it's not reliable enough yet and doesn't download podcasts automatically properly yet. Once that's sorted I'm sure I can free up about 50 GB of space! :D
 
You could always go for the 256gb version and then invest in the kickstarter - Nifty Mini Drive, that is going to create an adapter that sits flush in the MBP SD card slot and accepts microSD cards that currently go upto 128gb (and I'm guessing will continue getting larger and falling in price).

Obviously not SSD speeds but nice for some extra storage, if you need it in the future. Also kind of unlimited as you could have a host of microSDs that you swap in and out :)

Take a look:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1342319572/the-nifty-minidrive?ref=category
 
No, for 600 dollars I would buy myself a new road bike and exercise or a NAS RAID storage with 1TB
 
Nope, I'm very content with the 256gb. The price that apple is charging for the 512GB is ridiculous. In the course of time OWC may be selling SSD modules for the rMBP and 2012 MBA. I'm not holding my breath and I won't need it for a while, but it may be an option down the road.
 
On a recent photo trip the wife and I each shot over 400GB of raw files. So on tax free weekend I getting both the wife and I maxed out rMBPs. That will give us each over 500GB of SSD space to collect files in the field and process them with LR4 and plugins. When we get home the files will be uploaded to the main LR catalogs which will sit on LaCie 2big (3TB raid 1 mirrors) via thunderbolt. Backup is via TM to a 3TB Time Capsule (for one laptop) and to an external 3TB Seagate USB drive (for the other laptop). The rMBPs will be our new desktops. Since our anniversary is August 1st, this new computer setup is part of our present to ourselves. We both can't wait to finally say good by go DOS...I mean Windows. ;)
 
MCAsan said:
On a recent photo trip the wife and I each shot over 400GB of raw files.
Click to expand...
That's a lot of photos. Was it an especially long trip or did you take a huge amount of photos (maybe with AEB) or a bit of both?

Asking because I don't think I've shot 400Gb of pics since getting my 5D-II a couple of years back (I estimate that 400Gb==8000 RAWs, which is a heck of a lot of pictures to take in a short period of time).

Anyway, I digress: enjoy your his'n'hers MBPRs when you get 'em!
 
That's a lot of photos. Was it an especially long trip or did you take a huge amount of photos (maybe with AEB) or a bit of both?
Click to expand...

We were on animal shoots in South Africa for 2 weeks. So lots of high speed sequences. I was using my 5DIII which was giving off files around 30MB each. The wife mostly used her 7D which does smaller raw files...but has a slightly higher frame rate.

When we go somewhere to mostly shoot landscapes, the number of files goes way down and therefore so does the storage need. We are headed back out west in October for a 2 week shoot, mostly landscapes. We hope to have the rMBPs by then.
 
I've been pondering the idea of returning and upgrading to a 512 but considering i'm only using 188.98GB at the moment, and is the most i've used in 2 years i don't really see the point. Plus i have lots of rubbish to clean out so when my rMBP arrives it's likely to drop even more.

I have QNAP TS219P II NAS with 1TB RAID 1 which stores the majority of my media.

You can get 16GB SD Cards for pennies these days, you could stick that in your rMBP and barely even notice it. Much better than a USB stick IMO unless you also find something thats tiny.
 
Maybe I've gotten spoiled, but my current MacBook Pro 13" holds two drives with a total capacity of 1.5 TB, half of which I'm actually using. Since this is my work machine, I have a Boot Camp Windows partition, which I need for the office. I've also got around 150 GB of documentation associated with over 12 years' experience in various office projects.

The base Retina MBP model provides almost 1 1/2 more hours of battery endurance than the 2.6 GHz system. That's a major plus factor. But the thought of carrying around an external hard drive and plugging it in every time I need access to my office files just gives me the shivers. I'd love to compromise my preference for the 13" form factor and make the jump to that wonderful 15" display (after all, there's no more weight difference to argue against). But until OWC (or Apple) provides a 512 GB (or even more!) storage option for the base model I'm hesitating.

Yes, the newest MacBook Air models with their 512 GB storage capacity and 8 GB RAM are certainly looking better than last year's models, but the 13" system with that configuration costs as much as the base Retina! No contest.

P.S. What's a "macrumors 6502"?
 
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MCAsan said:
On a recent photo trip the wife and I each shot over 400GB of raw files. So on tax free weekend I getting both the wife and I maxed out rMBPs. That will give us each over 500GB of SSD space to collect files in the field and process them with LR4 and plugins. When we get home the files will be uploaded to the main LR catalogs which will sit on LaCie 2big (3TB raid 1 mirrors) via thunderbolt. Backup is via TM to a 3TB Time Capsule (for one laptop) and to an external 3TB Seagate USB drive (for the other laptop). The rMBPs will be our new desktops. Since our anniversary is August 1st, this new computer setup is part of our present to ourselves. We both can't wait to finally say good by go DOS...I mean Windows. ;)
Click to expand...

wow!

for the record.. windows 7 doesnt run on DOS. Windows 98/ME were the last OS's to run on DOS.
 
The one thing about external drives that might be problematic in my situation is that I don't actually have a desk. When you all are referencing external drives, are you accessing them wirelessly or are you plugging them in by USB3/TB?

I'm considering buying a NAS for backups.

My lack of desk makes external drives a questionable storage option as I need to reuse my workspace for other living uses (like cooking).
 
kaydot said:
The one thing about external drives that might be problematic in my situation is that I don't actually have a desk. When you all are referencing external drives, are you accessing them wirelessly or are you plugging them in by USB3/TB?

I'm considering buying a NAS for backups.

My lack of desk makes external drives a questionable storage option as I need to reuse my workspace for other living uses (like cooking).
Click to expand...

Thats the exact dilemma I have, Whats the point of a thin portable laptop when you have to lug around hard drives and cables and memory cards
 
i've got a SLI gaming rig with 3 terabytes of data as my main server and torrenting machine.. so personal data can stay on that and i can interchange movies/pictures with the retinabook.

an external is so fast. you just have to manage your data. Imagine a USB 3 512gb SSD as your external :cool:
 
I have a 240GB SSD which I will be moving to my new MBP, but it's way overkill for me. I have everything installed the way I want and am using 37GB - that's WITH my iTunes library as well! Lol

All of my data is on my NAS shared across the network, so I'm pretty worry free when it comes to storage.
I also have a couple of external FW800 drives as scratch disks and backup disks.
 
MCAsan said:
On a recent photo trip the wife and I each shot over 400GB of raw files. So on tax free weekend I getting both the wife and I maxed out rMBPs. That will give us each over 500GB of SSD space to collect files in the field and process them with LR4 and plugins. When we get home the files will be uploaded to the main LR catalogs which will sit on LaCie 2big (3TB raid 1 mirrors) via thunderbolt. Backup is via TM to a 3TB Time Capsule (for one laptop) and to an external 3TB Seagate USB drive (for the other laptop). The rMBPs will be our new desktops. Since our anniversary is August 1st, this new computer setup is part of our present to ourselves. We both can't wait to finally say good by go DOS...I mean Windows. ;)
Click to expand...

Well, if you find dropping $6000-$7000 on new computers not much of a problem, I would expect you to grab the top shelf ones. Enjoy them!
 
Use your SD card for some extra storage space for stuff that doesn't need very high speed memory like iTunes stuff. Use a micro SD card (like this 64 GB one)+ one of these and you can up your rMBP's storage by 25% for $90.
For faster storage if you want it you can up the class of your micro SD card.
 
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