What size internal SSD did you go for?

[JamesMay82]

I'm just speccing my new MacBook Pro 16 and I can't decide on what hard drive size to go for. Ideally I would like rely less on the cloud and the hassle of an external drive and just be able to have all my files, photos and videos with me at all time and then just use an external for time machine back when I'm back at home.

I currently have about 1.2TB of files which includes all my videos and photos etc so a 2TB would last for awhile but ideally 4TB would be the best way to future proof it. The problem is a matter of value for money as Apple just charge mega bucks for SSD!

So, what did you all go for? Anyone else think like me?

 

[Erkinshadow]

I picked up a base m1 air on sale for $800. Having little drive space anxiety with only 160 go of free space.

 

[Marsikus]

Base 512, must be more than enough after 128.

 

[curnalpanic]

Get the smallest size you don't think you will be able to fill anytime in the near future. But it will still be full very soon.

 

[Nbd1790]

I have the same mindset when it comes to files. I prefer a majority of them to be local, although I do use a little bit of cloud storage. I went with a 2tb SSD and then have Dropbox integrated (works well if you need to share media files anyway).

Little things here and there such as old photos, old media projects etc eventually get moved into dropbox where it's not "local", but still accessible. If you're constantly on wifi it's basically like they're stored internally in some way or another. I run a 2tb SSD for Time Machine and backup more important things like family photos into a 1tb external SSD just to have a second backup.

The difference between 2tb & 4tb is $600... which is a little insane. I justified picking up 2 external SSD's for TM & a floater drive for less than the $600.

 

[JamesMay82]

I have the same mindset when it comes to files. I prefer a majority of them to be local, although I do use a little bit of cloud storage. I went with a 2tb SSD and then have Dropbox integrated (works well if you need to share media files anyway).

Little things here and there such as old photos, old media projects etc eventually get moved into dropbox where it's not "local", but still accessible. If you're constantly on wifi it's basically like they're stored internally in some way or another. I run a 2tb SSD for Time Machine and backup more important things like family photos into a 1tb external SSD just to have a second backup.

The difference between 2tb & 4tb is $600... which is a little insane. I justified picking up 2 external SSD's for TM & a floater drive for less than the $600.

Yeah we sound very similar in our use cases except I’m using iCloud files. It works well as it syncs nicely between my desktop and laptop.

My plan is to make this new laptop my main machine and then get a monitor for when I’m working at home so I won’t necessarily need cloud storage as I won’t be syncing between computers anymore.

I’m def tempted to just go with the 2TB option and also force my self to do some culling of the family photos and videos as we do just end up with so many duplicates.

 

[Konrad]

The late 2013 retina replacement is probably upcoming, at my desk. Looking at the 14 and curious I’d the SSD is soldered in, or if there is a third party upgrade? On a side note, the RAM/HD Apple fixed practice should really meet some regulators like the USB-C requirement by the EU and come to an end. It is wrong in every context.

 

[transphasic]

Apple's SSD pricing is laughable and while I have many Apple shares, think that squeezing customers with badly over-priced options like this is going to drive people considering a mac to Samsung and other companies who make superb laptops.

The solution is obvious, just get a 1TB drive to handle applications/utilities, and store the data externally.

 

[MBAir2010]

256GB is all I need to fully function behind a laptop.
the external hard drives are there for a reason!

 

[MBAir2010]

Apple's SSD pricing is laughable and while I have many Apple shares, think that squeezing customers with badly over-priced options like this is going to drive people considering a mac to Samsung and other companies who make superb laptops.

personally, I would rather pay the extra for a MacBook that will last over.... well 13 years so far
compared to a Samsung which lasts 13 about months if one is lucky!

 

[BaddAdvice]

On my MBP 14, I just did the base spec - 512gb. After enjoying the 14 so much, and nowhere near running out of space, I upgraded to the MBP 16, but went with the 1TB drive, just in case. Price difference was somewhat minimal and not having to worry about carrying around an external drive was a plus. But, I'm wondering if 512gb would've been enough? I guess better safe than sorry....

 

[jeremysteele]

well 13 years so far
compared to a Samsung which lasts 13 about months if one is lucky!

I was going to say "nah, you're off with that comparison".

But having purchased a Samsung np350v5c in the past, I can say you are correct. It lasted a little over a year before it was completely obsolete. It was a beast of a machine at the time... one of the early models with graphics card switching (between integrated and dedicated) that wasn't a complete mess.

But... I ran into a lot of driver issues after a while, and the battery was a hot mess

 

[2REPOU]

With Apple Music and Photos in the cloud, I hardly use any of my 256 and I Torrent all TV programs for the family on it. I just bought a 512GB USB for local backups

 

[MBAir2010]

I was going to say "nah, you're off with that comparison".

But having purchased a Samsung np350v5c in the past, I can say you are correct. It lasted a little over a year before it was completely obsolete. It was a beast of a machine at the time... one of the early models with graphics card switching (between integrated and dedicated) that wasn't a complete mess.

But... I ran into a lot of driver issues after a while, and the battery was a hot mess

Logan Roy was the only person I ever saw use a Samsung laptop,
and that lasted one episode!

 

[NewUsername]

I used to have 128GB and it was a real pain.

256GB would be all right, but using iCloud without storing everything locally is still not that convenient I think (except for photos).

I now have 512GB with some 50GB left, which is good enough. But my next one will have 1TB.

More than 1TB is just too overpriced for me.

 

[JamesMay82]

With Apple Music and Photos in the cloud, I hardly use any of my 256 and I Torrent all TV programs for the family on it. I just bought a 512GB USB for local backups

I'm kind of in that situation now as my laptop is 256GB but I recently had a problem with apple photos and I needed to re download them, and I'll admit it worked but it took absolutely ages, even being on a fast connection.

 

[Clix Pix]

I had initially planned on purchasing a 16" M1 MBP with 2 TB storage but then changed my mind as I do a lot of photography and it is convenient to have the files upon which I"m working available on the machine; once they are edited, the files are then shifted to external drives. I also have RAW files on external drives if I am planning to return later to a particular series of image files and don't have time to cull and edit immediately.

The machine which I am replacing is a 15" 2018 Intel MBP, which has just 1 TB and I was becoming quite frustrated with the limitations of that. Another thing which prompted the purchase of the new machine was that the 16" M1 MBP with 4 TB SSD and 64 GB RAM is readily available in the Apple retail stores so no need to put together a BTO and wait for shipment; I just walked into the store one day and bought my new machine. VERY happy with it, too!

 

[JamesMay82]

I had initially planned on purchasing a 16" M1 MBP with 2 TB storage but then changed my mind as I do a lot of photography and it is convenient to have the files upon which I"m working available on the machine; once they are edited, the files are then shifted to external drives. I also have RAW files on external drives if I am planning to return later to a particular series of image files and don't have time to cull and edit immediately.

The machine which I am replacing is a 15" 2018 Intel, which has just 1 TB and I was becoming quite frustrated with the limitations of that. Another thing which prompted the purchase of the new machine was that the 16" M1 MBP with 4 TB SSD and 64 GB RAM is readily available in the Apple retail stores so no need to put together a BTO and wait for shipment; I just walked into the store one day and bought my new machine. VERY happy with it, too!

How do you manage your personal photos and videos of family etc? do you keep that on the machine now you have 4Tb or do you keep that on external drives?

 

[tstafford]

512 GB for me - I'll never get close to using it. I offload everything to iCloud because I move between devices all the time. My back up laptop is a '19 MBA and is only using 68 GB right now!

 

[MBAir2010]

I do a lot of photography and it I...

should read: do a lot of GREAT photography

what do you do with the 7 photos of something that only 1 made it online?
do you delete or store these images externally?
I need to figure this out soon

 

[Clix Pix]

How do you manage your personal photos and videos of family etc? do you keep that on the machine now you have 4Tb or do you keep that on external drives?

I don't shoot video at all, so that's a non-issue. I have current backups on external SSDs and archival backups on external HDD. I don't have family around here so very few personal family photos in the computer, they are in the archival files. I'm not a professional photographer, just an enthusiastic amateur, so I really don't have a lot of folders of personal images segregated out from other images.

I shoot with two Sony full-frame cameras and various lenses, and occasionally with other fixed-lens cameras as well as once in a while my iPhone. I don't use the Photos app at all; I use other software for editing my images. I shoot pretty much on a daily basis, so the images add up quickly!

We are about to be starting a new year, and one of the first projects of 2023 will be setting up new folders for images that will be shot throughout the year, plus shifting some folders and files to the external drives. It does feel good to know that I have the latitude to leave more on this machine than I ever could have done before, but I still am a firm believer in backing up everything, having all my important files backed up as well as retaining some of them on the computer and shifting others off to "supplemental" drives where they are still easily at hand but not needed to be on the computer all the time.

 

[1BadManVan]

Depends on your budget at the end of the day. If it's in budget and you want to keep this thing for as long as you can then I would get as much storage as you can afford to have. I have 1 tb on my Mac, currently no need for it but I want to keep this thing for years, I would rather have too much now and not need it then wish I did in a few years.

 

[Clix Pix]

should read: do a lot of GREAT photography

what do you do with the 7 photos of something that only 1 made it online?
do you delete or store these images externally?
I need to figure this out soon

Why, thank you!

If I've gone out and shot seven or eight images on a given day, when I go through them I delete the ones which I know I am not going to ever bother editing. I then usually will edit one or two, depending upon how much time I've got right then. Those go into a folder of edited images. Ones that I think I might get back to work on later I'll retain in the original folder of RAW images until I do get around to reviewing and editing them.

Sometimes I shoot a lot -- and I do mean a lot -- of images in a given day when I'm shooting wildlife such as the hooded mergansers, Great Blue Heron, and geese who live on our little lake, I'll review the images, pull out a few for further consideration and stick those into a separate folder, which I usually edit fairly promptly. If time is a constraint I'll simply set aside the entire folder of RAW images until I can deal with it. I also back up the entire folder of RAW images even prior to editing and those are also safe on a separate external drive.

Any images which don't look right to me for whatever reason: out-of-focus, busy background, blurry, composition isn't good, subject blinked or moved or the eyes are closed.....all get promptly deleted. I don't save any images which are not worth editing, keeping or sharing. Sometimes an image is marginal, so I'll work on it, see if it's worth saving, and sometimes careful editing can indeed rescue an "iffy" image, while at other times it doesn't, and I wind up deleting the image anyway.

Sometimes I'll have several nice images from which to choose on a given day when I'm ready to post in the Photo of the Day (POTD) thread, and sometimes by the end of the week I still have two or three which didn't make it beyond the "Edited Items" folder. Those I do keep anyway and eventually they also wind up on an external backup drive (I back up regularly: weekly, monthly, etc.).

 

[Jack Neill]

I can get by with 1TB, prefer 2TB to be comfortable. I like having all my music and photos with me on the internal.

 

[NoGood@Usernames]

Shortly after they became available, I picked up an Apple refurbished M1 Air with 256GB drive to check out the Apple Silicon hype and get reacquainted with MacOS to see where it stood after many years away. It is mainly used as a glorified internet browser while I'm hanging out on the couch, so the base storage is plenty for me.