2011 MacBook Pro 320gb vs vs 2022 imac 256gb SSD?

[Rgerhardt]

As the title states, wondering why my 11 year old laptop came with 320gb hard drive and the iMac base comes with a 256gb SSD hard drive. Looking at buying the iMac and was wondering if I need to go with the 512gb drive. Am I over thinking this?
Thanks.

 

[RokinAmerica]

Back then 320 GB was one of the higher capacity drives, 500 GB being very large at the time. 128 GB might have been an entry level size, but memory does not serve me well here.

 

[EugW]

As the title states, wondering why my 11 year old laptop came with 320gb hard drive and the iMac base comes with a 256gb SSD hard drive. Looking at buying the iMac and was wondering if I need to go with the 512gb drive. Am I over thinking this?

HDs have been much, much cheaper than SSDs. With regards to space, it depends on what you need to do with it, and if you will be using the cloud (like iCloud). You could need anywhere from 128 GB to 4 TB or more. We won't know.

For our entry level machines in this house, 128 GB or else 256 GB is fine. OTOH, my main machine has 3 GB in SSD storage (1 TB internal + 2 TB external), plus a 2 TB hard drive for Time Machine.

Back then 320 GB was one of the higher capacity drives, 500 GB being very large at the time. 128 GB might have been an entry level size, but memory does not serve me well here.

Entry level was 250 GB in 2011. Those machines came with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and it was decently fast. However, they were updatable to 10.13 High Sierra, and IMO, High Sierra is almost unusable on those laptop HDs.