We all have our own needs, but I had a MacBook Air with 128GB SSD and I was always filling it up. I would look at 256GB as a minimum these days given how much SSD's have come down in price and how much of a pain it is to upgrade any Apple kit now. Yes you can get an SSD from OWC, but do you want to go through that hassle later? If you are planning on having the machine for a few years (it sounds like it's a big investment for you), then save a little more and get either the 256GB or 512GB version and put in the maximum amount of RAM while you are at it.
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Is 128GB enough storage on the MacBook Pro?
- Thread starter CatherineVeraGat
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It really depends on what you plan to store on your MBP, but I would say that in most applications 128GB is insufficient. My advice would be to order your MBP with as much internal storage as possible - 256GB at a minimum.
[doublepost=1521694284][/doublepost]I need some help too in the same question. I am in process of buying a new MacBook Pro and paying more to go with the highest hardware strength, since I will use several software and programs, same time with several open pages and software like photoshop and in near future programming too. I am an old user of Microsoft and this is a new move for me. An apple associate told me you can have separate Windows as well (Not like a boot camp) for rainy days that you need to do something over there. Having said that, is 256 G enough? considering 21 G for OS? Please advise. Is anyone can show me how much any of these programs will fill the SSD?
So... "...can have a separate Windows as well (Not like a boot camp)..." Boot Camp does just do a "bare metal" second partition install of Windows. It's just an Apple program that makes it easier to do. But it accomplishes the same thing as manually booting to a Windows boot disc and manually installing.
"How much any of these programs fill fit"? You'd have to let us know what programs you mean.
I have a lot of programs in both my macOS and Windows installs, yet I still have 60 GB of free space on the macOS side, and 28GB of free space on the Windows side. (Since my last post, I increased the size of my Windows partition to 45 GB.) On the macOS side, my Applications folder takes up 65 GB. On my Windows side, my Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders take up 3 GB. (I'd have to boot in to Windows to see how much is in my user folder, which is where Steam stores its games. I'd estimate another 10-15 GB.)
A 128GB Macbook pro in 2018 is a 16GB iPhone in 2015. Yeah, it works. But don't do it you'll regret it. I regret not going higher than 256 but here I am... and I don't do a whole lot in comparison to some folks
The only advice that I can think to add is that you never want to run your internal storage all the way full. Especially if you do a lot of RAM-intensive tasks, your computer will use the internal storage as swap memory. The guideline I've learned and stick to is keeping your boot drive no more than 80% full.
So if you're just running the OS and a handful of programs, 128 GB is fine. As soon as you start keeping a lot of media or project files, that becomes a problem. I have 256 GB, and I'm fine so long as I keep my movie library on an external drive. Going down to 128 would mean storing a lot of my data on external storage, as I have some big software packages that eat up a lot of storage on their own.
So if you're just running the OS and a handful of programs, 128 GB is fine. As soon as you start keeping a lot of media or project files, that becomes a problem. I have 256 GB, and I'm fine so long as I keep my movie library on an external drive. Going down to 128 would mean storing a lot of my data on external storage, as I have some big software packages that eat up a lot of storage on their own.
I have found is if you have space you'll find a reason to use it. I think 128GB is enough, but I would go with 256GB at least to be on the safe side. Day in day out, I use about 100GB, so 128GB would be barely sufficient. However if I go on an extended trip and I take a lot of photographs, I end up with 500GB+ of files.
Funny, initially I thought you were taling RAM, but you are talking HD/SSD.....
Thank you for the feedback.
Let me drop some light in the more easy way: I am aiming for a 256 G memory on a MacBook Pro. I am a type of user while using my pc, it is at least several safari or chrome open windows, same time, youtube is streaming, MS office including word, excel are open, converting some files to pdf, I will have Photoshop one day since I have some plans for photo editing. Plus, I am in process of learning Java S and Phyton which they do need rendering or compiling. About 9000 pics on my icloud waiting to stream to my laptop and I will spare a specific folder for lots of pdf books, and music as well. Now you tell me having 256 G SSD plus along with an ex-hard drive for the home base, is that enough? (Not to mention, I will go for top-notch hardware on this setup to not lose the speed of processing. -->
- 2.5GHz dual-core 7th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
- 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory
- 256GB SSD storage
- Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640
- Two Thunderbolt 3 ports
- No touch bar
Again I do appreciate for your feedback. I am an old user of Microsoft and have done lots of stuff with it with an old Windows 7 for many years, SO this switch will be a big one for me and have lots of questions.
Best,
No, it is not enough space for a MacBook Pro. Would recommend at least double that. Probably 500gb+ if you plan on keeping it for a while.
Probably not, but your use may be very light. If you are doing more than just web browsing, email and the occasional document/spreadsheet then you will need more than this. What capacity does your current computer have and how close are you to filling it.
It always depends.
If that MBP is your only PC, 128 is likely not enough. If, however, you have a large-capacity desktop Mac and the MBP is intended only for mobile use, 128 can be very manageable.
It's not easy to manage 128 GB if you plan to keep all your files on the Mac, but it is quite manageable if you use iCloud to manage data files the way it's done in iOS. I have no problems managing storage on my 64 GB iPhone and 128 GB iPad Pro. My larger data sets (photos, iCloud Drive documents, music library) are all in the cloud, with Optimize Storage (or the equivalent) enabled. (I have an iMac with 3 TB internal, so I do have one device that has full-time, on-device storage.)
Mac storage management options have become more iPhone/iPad-like with every year. It can be cheaper to pay monthly for non-redundant/shared iCloud storage than it is to buy an extra 128 GB or more on several devices, solely for the sake of storing duplicates of your various data sets. What's more, cloud-based resources are synchronized among all devices - the same data available on whatever device I'm using.
If that MBP is your only PC, 128 is likely not enough. If, however, you have a large-capacity desktop Mac and the MBP is intended only for mobile use, 128 can be very manageable.
It's not easy to manage 128 GB if you plan to keep all your files on the Mac, but it is quite manageable if you use iCloud to manage data files the way it's done in iOS. I have no problems managing storage on my 64 GB iPhone and 128 GB iPad Pro. My larger data sets (photos, iCloud Drive documents, music library) are all in the cloud, with Optimize Storage (or the equivalent) enabled. (I have an iMac with 3 TB internal, so I do have one device that has full-time, on-device storage.)
Mac storage management options have become more iPhone/iPad-like with every year. It can be cheaper to pay monthly for non-redundant/shared iCloud storage than it is to buy an extra 128 GB or more on several devices, solely for the sake of storing duplicates of your various data sets. What's more, cloud-based resources are synchronized among all devices - the same data available on whatever device I'm using.
I think in 2019, with the bulk of modern OS's 128GB is really a hard sell. I don't think anyone should be selling a laptop with such a paltry amount. Apple isn't alone, as plenty of other makers do the same and its no better in windows. I'd say its probably worse given how windows likes to hold onto applied updates.
Has the bulk of OS X/macOS changed so much since the day of the 64 GB MBA? Has the bulk of commonly used apps changed significantly in that time?
That 64 GB MBA would have come loaded with Leopard. System requirement for Leopard was 9 GB disk space.
Today's 128 GB MBA/MBP come with Mojave. System requirement for that is 12.5-18.5 GB (we don't yet have a GM release size for Catalina). So yes, we need 3.5-9.5 GB of additional space today than in 2008. 38%-105% growth in the OS size sounds very substantial. However, as a percentage of 128 GB... that's an additional 3%-8% of the disk. That 3%-8% might be the straw that breaks the 128 GB camel's back, but the real elephant in the room is whatever's occupying the rest of the disk.
Between Leopard and Mojave the minimum system requirements have fluctuated. Snow Leopard dropped precipitously to 5 GB, Lion bumped up to 7 GB, Mountain Lion - Yosemite 8 GB, El Capitan and Sierra both 8.8 GB. High Sierra finally eclipsed Leopard, calling for 14.3 GB, and Mojave's variable 12.5-18 GB means it's either better or worse than High Sierra, depending (depending on what, I'm not sure).
One aspect of the OS that has grown is caching - far more substantially than the actual OS code base (buffering of media streaming and cloud upload/download/syncing, auto-save/crash recovery, tabbed browsing, search indexing...). Statistics on that are hard to come by. It's especially hard to pin down because cache sizes adjust based on available resources (at least, they do when the OS and apps are behaving properly). This factor is well hidden from users - hidden directories, no call-out in storage utilization graphs, etc., no doubt because if it was out there in the open users would try to manage things, with the vast majority mucking up their systems in the process.
Meantime, over in App Land... The "Discipline of Delivery-by-Download," "The Discipline of Mobile," and the overall maturation of feature sets seems to have kept the size of apps well within bounds. I don't have historic statistics for the size of the typical Applications folder, but my overall sense is that it hasn't changed much, in one direction or the other.
Among the components of storage (OS, Apps, and User Data), as always we have to look towards User Data as the major culprit. We add more music to our iTunes libraries, we save every photo we've ever taken, and retain every document we've ever created. We move everything from one machine to the next, and with each computer purchase we have to allow for continued expansion.
I'm not going to argue that 64 GB was an adequately-equipped computer, even in January 2008. Heck, Apple moved from 64 to 128 GB minimum Flash with the Late 2008 MBA. Since then, 128 GB Flash has held steady as the basement configuration. In terms of perception... it's been a very long time at 128 GB. And the cost of Flash, while not dropping in cost-per-gigabyte the way spinning HD storage has across the decades, certainly has dropped enough that 128 GB of 2019 Flash is far cheaper than 128 GB of 2008 Flash.
But as I argued in a previous post, the use of cloud storage can have a significant impact on local storage requirements. The ability to shift data to the cloud is one factor that has changed dramatically since 2008. Even a conservative user of cloud resources can probably manage to move 3.5-9.5 GB of their data to the cloud in order to compensate for OS growth.
While (as I stated in a previous post), 128 GB is likely inadequate if you carry your entire house on your back, I think 128 GB remains a viable configuration if the cloud is embraced. YMMV.
I really don't think 128 GB storage belongs in any "pro" computer, TBH.
Actually, I don't think it belongs in any new computer these days. Non pro should start at 256 and pro should start at 512, considering the actual price Apple pays for SSDs and the price they charge for their computers.
But to answer your question, no, I would not go for a computer with 128 GBs of non-upgradable storage.
Actually, I don't think it belongs in any new computer these days. Non pro should start at 256 and pro should start at 512, considering the actual price Apple pays for SSDs and the price they charge for their computers.
But to answer your question, no, I would not go for a computer with 128 GBs of non-upgradable storage.