Will 64GB SSD be enough for OS X/Windows 8 + apps?

[xmichaelp]

Alright I'll give a little backstory here. (You can skip right to the questions if you want)

I'm planning on upgrading my 2012 macbook pro with a samsung 830 ssd as a boot drive in the optibay.

My original plan was to get a 256 GB drive to house both OS's plus all my apps and games which would just barely fit. I recently decided against this for the reasons of price and because my game collection is getting bigger than initially expected, I wasn't planning on getting anymore games at the time and with the ones I plan on getting it would put it over the limit. Plus I figure games don't need to be on an SSD anyways.

I then decided to get a 128 GB SSD and just put my games on my HDD but that would be leaving a lot of unused space on my SSD which would probably never go to use.

So this leaves me with a few questions.

1. Would 64 GB be enough to hold OS X with ~5 GB of apps and a W8 partition with no apps or anything? Keep in mind I took off the excess fonts in OS X which freed up a gig or two.

2. Is it possible to pick and choose which apps go on the SSD and which ones go on the HDD? or must you place the whole application folder on one or the other? Because COD4 and Doom 3 take up 8 GB's and I don't want those on the SSD.

3. If I add 16 GB's of RAM would that take away 16 GB's on storage? Isn't it true that when you put your mac to sleep it writes out your ram content to your drive and takes up however much space you have in your RAM? Or could I allocate this to the HDD instead?


Thanks in advance to anyone who can help on any of my concerns, I'd be really grateful.

 

[benwiggy]

I then decided to get a 128 GB SSD and just put my games on my HDD but that would be leaving a lot of unused space on my SSD which would probably never go to use.

Ben's Law: You always fill a hard drive.
64Gb is just too small. You're already making sacrifices and trying to trim stuff to fit. Which means you've got no expansion capabilities.

3. If I add 16 GB's of RAM would that take away 16 GB's on storage? Isn't it true that when you put your mac to sleep it writes out your ram content to your drive and takes up however much space you have in your RAM?

The memory settings can be changed. But yes. It does this so that the Mac can power down, but still wake up with things as they were before.
You can change it so that it continues to power the RAM while sleeping, which uses more battery life and you lose the contents of memory if the battery runs out. Other options are available.

 

[xmichaelp]

Well the thing is, if I can comfortably fit both OS's and non-game apps on a 64 GB SSD I'll be fine as I don't see my self needing more space than that. If the content mentioned above takes up like 68 gigs for example, the other 60 gigs would just be extra that I wouldn't use.

And thanks for help, but do you know if I can write the sleep RAM files to HDD?

 

[benwiggy]

Yes, you can specify the location of the sleepimage. Look at the man page for the pmset command.

 

[xmichaelp]

Yes, you can specify the location of the sleepimage. Look at the man page for the pmset command.

Thanks again

Anyone know if I can specify which apps go on the ssd and which one go on the hdd? I can't seem to find anything of it on google, vague searches like "mac apps on ssd and hdd" don't give me what I'm looking for.

Thanks in avance

 

[rocknblogger]

Thanks again

Anyone know if I can specify which apps go on the ssd and which one go on the hdd? I can't seem to find anything of it on google, vague searches like "mac apps on ssd and hdd" don't give me what I'm looking for.

Thanks in avance

Windows allows you to install apps/games to any drive you want. If however you use steam then you'll have to set the folder for game installs and leave it that way. It's not advisable to install different Steam games to different locations.

OSX on the other hand will make you install apps/games to the same drive that the OS is installed.

I can almost guarantee that 64GB's will eventually be too small.with Windows even if you install your apps and games to a second drive it still installs certain files into the Windows user directory. Eventually you'll need more space. At the minimum you should use a 128GB drive for your Windows and OSX drive.

 

[benwiggy]

Anyone know if I can specify which apps go on the ssd and which one go on the hdd? I can't seem to find anything of it on google, vague searches like "mac apps on ssd and hdd" don't give me what I'm looking for.

OS X requires all Apple apps to be in the /Applications folder. If you move them to another location, upgraders won't work.
Most third-party software follows the same practice. You can move some apps, if they are only an app package with no support files, and the best place is probably the user /Applications folder (not there by default, create it at the same level as Documents, Photos, Music etc).

You can move the entire Applications folder, using sym links, but that is not 100% trustrworthy.

OS X is unlikely other Unixes in that it is designed to work on one partition, one volume. Moving swap, sleepimages, or other OS folders is problematic.
Moving the user account to another location is just about acceptable.

 

[xmichaelp]

OS X requires all Apple apps to be in the /Applications folder. If you move them to another location, upgraders won't work.
Most third-party software follows the same practice. You can move some apps, if they are only an app package with no support files, and the best place is probably the user /Applications folder (not there by default, create it at the same level as Documents, Photos, Music etc).

You can move the entire Applications folder, using sym links, but that is not 100% trustrworthy.

OS X is unlikely other Unixes in that it is designed to work on one partition, one volume. Moving swap, sleepimages, or other OS folders is problematic.
Moving the user account to another location is just about acceptable.

Ahh I see, I'll just wait a bit and get a 128 GB one then and keep the sleep image enabled and apps on ssd.

I could still put the whole steam folder on the hdd though right? The steam library seems to be a completely different thing unrelated to the apps folder. The apps folders just shows shortcuts to launch games and all the games and files are stored in a large steam folder. Would that be fine to keep on the secondary drive?

And one last question.. I know I have to reformat the secondary drive to a certain format to put both osx and windows files on it, but would I have to partition it? or could the two different file types just be stored side by side on the same single partition?

Again huge thanks to those who responded

Windows allows you to install apps/games to any drive you want. If however you use steam then you'll have to set the folder for game installs and leave it that way. It's not advisable to install different Steam games to different locations.

Alright, I plan on just putting the W8 and chrome on the SSD with the origin and steam files on the secondary. I only use windows for games unavailable on OS X

 

[benwiggy]

Ahh I see, I'll just wait a bit and get a 128 GB one then and keep the sleep image enabled and apps on ssd.

You could always turn your SSD and HDD into a Fusion drive, and let the OS decide where to put the files.

I could still put the whole steam folder on the hdd though right? The steam library seems to be a completely different thing unrelated to the apps folder. The apps folders just shows shortcuts to launch games and all the games and files are stored in a large steam folder. Would that be fine to keep on the secondary drive?

I don't know anything about Steam, I'm afraid.

And one last question.. I know I have to reformat the secondary drive to a certain format to put both osx and windows files on it, but would I have to partition it? or could the two different file types just be stored side by side on the same single partition?

You need one volume in a format that both platforms can read.