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Storage Options - why are all machines coming with small hard drives?

PCtoMAC1

PCtoMAC1

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 16, 2012
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I’ve always been old school and relied on my internal hard drive for storage. I think I’m at the point where I’d feel comfortable with buying a more affordable MacBook with a smaller SSD, but I’m interested in how people keep their data, games, etc off their machines.

I’m not super interested in paying apple for cloud storage every month. What are my options?
 
As @MrAperture said, If you only need to access specific data at home, a NAS/server is very convenient as your laptop remains cable-free - provided the Wi-Fi speeds suffice for your needs.

Although not applicable for the current MacBook Air series, the 14" and 16" MacBook Pros come with an SDXC slot.
There are small adapters for microSD cards that end completely flush with the MacBooks exterior.
Not the greatest speeds but a very affordable alternative dependent on the type of data one wants to store. Apparently this one fits the 14"/16":
www.amazon.com

BaseQi Aluminum microSD Adapter for MacBook Air 13" and MacBook Pro 13"/15" (Non-Retina) Models

* Perfectly match to MacBook Air 13" ! * Keep aesthetic of MacBook Air 13" and increase the storage! Plug-in-and-Forget BASEQI is a short / low profile Micro SD adapter designed exclusively for MacBook Air 13". Just insert Micro SD card and slide in to MacBook Air 13" SDXC card slot to increase t...
www.amazon.com
 
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You don’t have to buy the smallest SSD. There are larger options at purchase time.
 
What is the best option for additional storage besides a NAS, or paying Apple's outrageous ssd upgrade prices?

Maybe an external SSD, and somehow sync it to a secondary one to keep as a backup?
 
External drives are the way to go and this has always been the case. It just became a more obvious use case as lower capacity but higher performing SSDs began to replacing the old spinning hard drives.

I keep my data external to my computer. Why? Because my data is my data and I've held onto some of those files through the lives of many computers. If my computer goes down, I don't want to lose my data. I have no issue with the lowest capacity devices because the majority of what I keep is offloaded/archived to my external storage medium. Mess up something with my OS? Hell, accidentally pull a virus or ransomware or something? Who cares, just factory reset/wipe the computer. All my files are still happily sitting on my external drive.

External drives can also be set up with redundancies to protect your data. Storage drive fails? Big deal, I've got a redundant setup so the information is already copied to another drive already.

If you've ever been worried about what would happen if you lose your computer or your computer malfunctions you should think about learning about the advantages of keeping external backups. Protect your data. For most of us, that information is far more valuable than the computer itself.
 
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PCtoMAC1 said:
I’ve always been old school and relied on my internal hard drive for storage. I think I’m at the point where I’d feel comfortable with buying a more affordable MacBook with a smaller SSD, but I’m interested in how people keep their data, games, etc off their machines.

I’m not super interested in paying apple for cloud storage every month. What are my options?
Click to expand...
Typical use case of the base model consumer Macs just need 8GB memory & 256GB storage.

If you are beyond consumer behavior then bump up the storage.

Others opt for external solutions that newer users & updated use cases prefer.

If it was cheaper I'd want an internal fast SSD + slow SSD Fusion Drive solution.

1TB fast SSD + 8TB slow SSD.
 
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phillytim said:
What's your method for keeping redundant backups of your primary external drive, @Algus?
Click to expand...
My external right now is a two drive array configured for RAID 1

You need to have two drives for that and then everything stored on one drive is automatically copied to the other drive. The performance isn't as good but then I don't have to worry about one of the drives failing. Just about the only way I'd be totally boned is if I had a fire. I have a bunch of stuff in the cloud but not everything.
 
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arw said:
Although not applicable for the current MacBook Air series, the 14" and 16" MacBook Pros come with an SDXC slot.
There are small adapters for microSD cards that end completely flush with the MacBooks exterior.
Not the greatest speeds but a very affordable alternative dependent on the type of data one wants to store.
Click to expand...
Would not recommend. Maybe the bugs were fixed in Venutra and/or the new MBPs, but when I tried that with my 2015 MBA leaving the SDXC slot filled blocked the laptop from entering deep-sleep. Which meant a steady 2-3%/hour battery drain if I left my SDXC storage in and the laptop off the charger. If I left it on a shelf Friday it would be dead when I tried to use it Monday.

With my Mac Mini I keep my Photos/Steam library and other large archives on an external SSD which sits next to the time machine backup. If you primarily use the Air with a docking station and external monitor as a desktop you could do something similar and then only leave the data you need on the go on the air's internal drive. However if your Air is always on the go I would suggest buying enough internal storage to store everything.
 
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Honestly, I just use OneDrive (since I own my own domain name and Microsoft 365), and also iCloud package.
But, main data is in OneDrive.

Additionally, I cannot be bothered with USB drives, and when moving from location to location and travelling. A pain, if you ask me...
 
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