Resolved Is the concern for onboard storage valid in 2015 and beyond?

[newellj]

Thank you all for your feedback. I love that this thread is taking off and I'll try to respond to as many points as I can.

Regarding the main discussion of 128 gigs being too small, I think there are plenty of cases where it certainly is just that, too small. However, I am a college student, so I probably don't have to tell you all that I'm a media junkie. I realize this makes the case for more internal storage, but bear with me here. For things like music (I have 40 or 50 GB), movies (~400 GB but adding more all the time), and photos (30-40 GB) I wouldn't mind using an external 3.0 or thunderbolt drive because these things aren't accessed daily. Sure maybe the music category, but that's from my iPhone most likely. Therefore, I wouldn't mind grabbing the little 2.5" 2 or 3 TB drive for those days I need it for whatever reason. I don't have a big boy job yet, so I'm not doing any business traveling. Would be more along the lines of a small trip or vacation and a run-of-the-mill hard drive would be fine in these cases.

Speaking of music, iTunes Match is holding on to my songs in the cloud for me, iCloud and OneDrive have my photos, but my videos are indeed vulnerable. As one user mentioned however, I would get a backup drive for my external drive to minimize risk and just to have for physical copies in the event of a massive Apple or Microsoft data breach, mutant overlords, nuclear war, etc.

Someone mentioned the "made for Mac" branding on some drives. I've always known this to be a scam on the technologically challenged, so not only is it good to avoid to save money, but also because those universal drives are blank slates and can hop between OSes right out of the box, correct?

If you really are a media junky, I'd rethink 128GB. I use external drives a lot, as I mentioned above, but there are drawbacks with that. Among other things, you should seriously consider having an actual duplicate, as opposed to a backup, if there's anything you care about and can't easily copy from somewhere else. External drives are easily dropped or lost.

Another thing to think about is that you need to keep a decent portion of the disk free to ensure good performance...you don't want to have, say, 121GB used on a 128GB drive.

 

[maflynn]

How often will you be writing to and from it for it to be a problem? won't it be you shift stuff you want to keep for sentimental sake onto it and access rarely if ever?

My DAS is used for prior year images. For instance, I currently have my 2015 pictures on my MBP, so as I take pictures, and load them into LR, they're on my MBP. Next January, I'll move that directory (in LR) to the DAS. I access files/folders on my DAS often but its not needed when traveling.

The biggest thing I may miss is my iTunes library but then I'll just stream my content when I travel

 

[Zxxv]

My DAS is used for prior year images. For instance, I currently have my 2015 pictures on my MBP, so as I take pictures, and load them into LR, they're on my MBP. Next January, I'll move that directory (in LR) to the DAS. I access files/folders on my DAS often but its not needed when traveling.

The biggest thing I may miss is my iTunes library but then I'll just stream my content when I travel

right. so theres not really any speed bottle neck to worry about like some posters are suggesting. Even with a 128gb usb or sd card plugged in it won't be used for immediate give it to me yesterday access so won't be an issue to the OP.

 

[brinary001]

If you really are a media junky, I'd rethink 128GB. I use external drives a lot, as I mentioned above, but there are drawbacks with that. Among other things, you should seriously consider having an actual duplicate, as opposed to a backup, if there's anything you care about and can't easily copy from somewhere else. External drives are easily dropped or lost.

Another thing to think about is that you need to keep a decent portion of the disk free to ensure good performance...you don't want to have, say, 121GB used on a 128GB drive.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Although as I said in an earlier post, I have roughly half a terabyte of media of all kinds and even with a 1 TB internal drive--something that isn't financially feasible right now--I'd have already used half the allotted space with the other half soon shrinking as more stuff was added. Also, I've already made peace with the reality of either having to grab a media drive in order to insure the constant availability of my files, or only have access at home because they were all on a DAS or NAS. I'll probably setup an sFTP server at some point within the next year though.

And I hadn't given the performance going down due to reaching the data limit any thought until you pointed it out. Multiple drives are just inconvenient, but overall computing power going down has got to be a no-go.

I see a couple of issues with buying a 128GB model today. First, a new MBP is a fabulously powerful, and rather expensive machine that will likely have a useful lifespan of 5 years or more. If it's tight on storage today, what will it feel like 5 years from now? Second, I've tried to live with computers low on storage, and it gets old fast. You spend a lot of time managing your space. Using a hard drive is another expense, another thing to carry along with you, something easily lost or stolen, and something to drain your battery while watching a movie from it, etc. Will you remember that savings more over the next few years, or the fact that you have to constantly manage drive space and can't use this great computer to its full potential?

This is true. What's the point of having a gorgeous and robust machine if it'll only impose limitations on me? Be it now or tomorrow.

 

[newellj]

If it helps (or doesn't...), my media profile is roughly similar to yours. I got along for quite a while with 256 and 2x 2TB external HDDs but earlier this year found that I was really running out of headroom on the 256GB internal drive...

 

[maflynn]

right. so theres not really any speed bottle neck to worry about like some posters are suggesting. Even with a 128gb usb or sd card plugged in it won't be used for immediate give it to me yesterday access so won't be an issue to the OP.

It depends on your need, I tried the SD card for storage setup and found that I was not able to deal with the slow performance. I think TB and even USB are doable for many types of storage needs, but SD card may be pushing it imo

 

[dray67]

I recently bought a mid 2014 refurb 13" rMBP with 128gb storage, I opted for the Transcend 128gb sd and the Toshiba 1gb usb 3.0 external HDD, obviously a refurb is far cheaper but I'm giving you my opinion of the SD card and external HDD use so far.

The SD card is ok with varied results with writes as high as 60mb/s but I suspect real world use will average half that or less but it's only for media storage, the Tosh is going around 100mb/s read and write, I've been dumping files on the Tosh and moving them to the SD card just to get a feel for the speed in regular use and I'm really impressed with the Tosh, I think I could happily work from the Tosh but I'm not doing massively intensive photo or media editing, I wouldn't even try with the SD card if I'm honest.

I'm not sure what the USD price difference is for the entry level rMBP and the 256gb model, in the UK it's £200, the SD card and external HDD cost me £124, If I was buying new I think I would've gone for the entry level and the external options.

Good luck with the purchase, it's a nice headache to have.

 

[brinary001]

It depends on your need, I tried the SD card for storage setup and found that I was not able to deal with the slow performance. I think TB and even USB are doable for many types of storage needs, but SD card may be pushing it imo

Hmm I see. So the SD card option should really be saved as a last resort because of its unpredictability. I guess the convenience of it always being attached to your computer is cancelled out by slow speeds.

So then if I might ask, what did you have on your card? I was just planning on putting my music and maybe some of my favorite movies on it and then keeping the rest of my media on an external hard drive.

 

[newellj]

Hmm I see. So the SD card option should really be saved as a last resort because of its unpredictability. I guess the convenience of it always being attached to your computer is cancelled out by slow speeds.

So then if I might ask, what did you have on your card? I was just planning on putting my music and maybe some of my favorite movies on it and then keeping the rest of my media on an external hard drive.

Another thing to consider - and this gets an IIRC qualification - the laptop won't fully go to sleep with an SD card in the reader.

 

[brinary001]

I recently bought a mid 2014 refurb 13" rMBP with 128gb storage, I opted for the Transcend 128gb sd and the Toshiba 1gb usb 3.0 external HDD, obviously a refurb is far cheaper but I'm giving you my opinion of the SD card and external HDD use so far.

The SD card is ok with varied results with writes as high as 60mb/s but I suspect real world use will average half that or less but it's only for media storage, the Tosh is going around 100mb/s read and write, I've been dumping files on the Tosh and moving them to the SD card just to get a feel for the speed in regular use and I'm really impressed with the Tosh, I think I could happily work from the Tosh but I'm not doing massively intensive photo or media editing, I wouldn't even try with the SD card if I'm honest.

I'm not sure what the USD price difference is for the entry level rMBP and the 256gb model, in the UK it's £200, the SD card and external HDD cost me £124, If I was buying new I think I would've gone for the entry level and the external options.

Good luck with the purchase, it's a nice headache to have.

Thanks for the stats! That'll help guide my external storage lifestyle. And yeah this is a fun problem to have. Despite the tough decision, I love new computer time.

 

[Zxxv]

The usb small hardly stick out drives are they any use in this scenario? They are so small now like sd cards

 

[brinary001]

I just wanted to let everyone know that I ended up with the 256 gig rMBP and it's coming later this week. Thanks to everyone for their input, I took it all seriously and ended up weighing the major financial savings of sacrificing a ton of storage with not having much storage at all. Hence my arrival at the 256 GB option, which came in at $1424.99.

As soon as I receive it and get situated I'll be picking up a LaCie/Porche 2 TB external drive for all my media (except music). This should be fine until I can make my own NAS or sFTP server.

Anyway, thanks again everybody and hopefully this thread will continue to help others in the future!