What size internal SSD did you go for?

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Sorting them by year- as is so easy with the TV Show tag- really helps organize them. Good tagging software- I like MetaZ and/or Subler myself but there are other popular options- will also allow you to put short descriptions in that show on AppleTV, just like the short movie descriptions that show when browsing movies to rent. It takes time to tag home movies but it's a do-it-once chore and then you can quickly find exactly the video you are wanting to watch.

Another suggestion: chapters are your friend for related short clips. Maybe all those walking clips could be in a single movie with chapters to identify each part... like the chapters in a book. I don't use iMovie much but FCPX makes it very easy to put a group of clips together as one video and put chapters wherever you want them. Thus, chapter 1 could be trying to walk, chapter 2 nearly walking, chapter 3 living room, chapter 4 kitchen. Then you render it as ONE movie called learning to walk or something like that and the chapters show the progression. You can jump to a specific chapter of a movie as easily as you can jump to chapters in rented movie streams.

This can simplify the collection from short little bits & pieces to combined short movies as applicable... less volume of movies but still holding everything you want to preserve. It can clean up/organize what could be a very long list of very short videos without having to just dump any video you want to keep.

 

[ian87w]

Personally, I would go minimum 512GB, and 1TB if I have the budget. 256GB is very limited for a desktop usage unless one treats the laptop like an iPad where everything is cloud based, including documents and other data. I live with 256GB just fine in my Android tablet, but on my old laptop, I was maxing out 256GB easily. On a desktop OS, I tend to download things including large files, images, ISOs, and also do full editing on photos and videos.

128GB is almost useless on a desktop environment as the OS itself will already take a huge chunk of storage space. So I would go minimum 512GB, with higher storage as budget allows.

 

[transphasic]

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

Can't speak to your situation, but I used a Galaxybook pro 2 360 for a year and it was FAR lighter than the current macbook airs with an AMOLED touch screen. Keyboard sucked but that was due to the incredibly thin form factor.

 

[pshufd]

I got 1 TB as I expected to use this as my machine to do everything: desktop and laptop. I didn't realize that I could only run 2 external monitors though. So I decided to go with a laptop and a desktop. I eventually got a Studio and hang 2.5 of external SSD storage to it. But I like having 1 TB of space even though I've never used more than 512. But I like that I can do other things with this. I am rather surprised that most people also get 1 TB.

 

[Timpetus]

I plan on 1TB next time but so far have been ok with 512GB. It doesn’t leave me a lot of extra room but when I have extra room I fill it somehow and then I’m stuck spending more money each time I upgrade.

 

[pshufd]

I plan on 1TB next time but so far have been ok with 512GB. It doesn’t leave me a lot of extra room but when I have extra room I fill it somehow and then I’m stuck spending more money each time I upgrade.

I use it for temporary storage.

A home NAS is great as you can get a lot of storage hanging off of it so that your notebooks don't require a lot of storage. You can just copy some files back onto the notebook if you need them or access them over the LAN if you are at home.

 

[CraigJDuffy]

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.

It’s soldered as often manufactures do these days. You cannot achieve the same high speeds with user replaceable ssds.

 

[Spotlighter9]

From my post in a separate thread on why I chose 2TB in our 16" M1 MBP:

I think the value of Storage vs RAM vs CPU (and even display size) upgrades are highly dependent on how one uses their MBP. For us, my wife and I use the shared MBP solely as a portable desktop with the most important task being organizing, editing, and securely backing up (3-2-1 backup) our combined ~900GB iCloud Photo Libraries of our family life. We don't need to open several apps or 50 tabs in Chrome requiring more than 16GBs of RAM or do anything CPU intensive requiring more cores or the MAX. The decision to upgrade the SSD to 2TB was made even easier by several collateral advantages: 1) the blazing fast SSD speeds of the 2TB over the 512GB or 1TB or any external; 2) the M1's ability to memory swap SSD as RAM; 3) better SSD wear leveling/TBW rating from the 2TB for longevity; and 4) not having to juggle external drives, dongles, or extra weight...especially given the physical bulkiness/weight of the new 16" M1 MBP. I intend to keep this MBP a very long time (5-10 years) so I want the SSD to stay reliable and last. For me, after a year of use I still feel the 2TB upgrade was the right choice.

 

[Count Blah]

I got a base 14” MBP. I also added a flush fit thumb drive to add another 512 Gig. I created soft links for downloads, music and photos. I backup regularly, so all good there. This greatly calmed my storage concerns

 

[Silvestru Hosszu]

I also opted for 2 TB for my current 16 MBP Max. I have around 1 TB of files (out of more the 10 TB) that I want to keep on my main laptop.
Always carrying external drives is different. I opt for the most comfortable solution when I have the necessary funds.

 

[iObama]

Would love 1TB (or even 2!), but these things are so damn expensive. I'm sure I'll manage quite well with a 512GB SSD and some external drives

 

[ponzicoinbro]

On MBPs 1TB is enough for me. When the Mac Pro comes out I'll probably use 2TB and add more later if needed.

 

[whitby]

For laptops I tend get as much as I can afford with 4 TB being the upper limit. I often travel to places with either no internet connection or a very slow internet connection and so cloud storage is virtually useless except as a backup when I am home or somewhere there is a decent connection. I am an avid photographer with at least one high resolution camera ~61MP and I like to have my music library with me with around 20K tracks.

For desktops I like the speed of internal SSDs which is far higher than even TB 4 drives. When you are doing focus stacking a lot of memory and high speed storage is a major advantage.

I also do not like hanging lots of external drives off my laptops. For the desktops I have a decent NAS and TB 4 drive or two for backup but not for main operating storage (storage used while processing data or an image).

 

[JamesMay82]

For laptops I tend get as much as I can afford with 4 TB being the upper limit. I often travel to places with either no internet connection or a very slow internet connection and so cloud storage is virtually useless except as a backup when I am home or somewhere there is a decent connection. I am an avid photographer with at least one high resolution camera ~61MP and I like to have my music library with me with around 20K tracks.

For desktops I like the speed of internal SSDs which is far higher than even TB 4 drives. When you are doing focus stacking a lot of memory and high speed storage is a major advantage.

I also do not like hanging lots of external drives off my laptops. For the desktops I have a decent NAS and TB 4 drive or two for backup but not for main operating storage (storage used while processing data or an image).

Damn! I’ve just ordered mine and went for the 1TB option after all my talk above I decided to be sensible plus I’ve had a massive photo and video cull as well.

This post has made me regret it slightly as it would be oh so nice to have 4TB.

It boiled down to value money for me, especially when externals while not attractive and slightly inconvenient, they do offer good value. We picked up Samsung t7 1TB for £89.

 

[Clix Pix]

The day that I bought my M1 16" MBP with the 4 TB SSD/storage, I had this thought spinning around in my head, "Am I overreaching, is this really necessary for what I do with a computer?"

It is now several weeks later and I am very, very glad that I did go ahead with getting a 4TB machine. As the old year was ending and the new year was beginning and I also had a couple of photo ops in which I shot many more images than usual, I was so, so happy that I could just toss all the files into the computer and then work with what I needed to handle at that time and didn't have to constantly look at the internal disk's record of what space was available because it was no longer a huge concern. I could actually breathe and just do with my files and folders what I needed at the time I needed it. Some of the stuff which is on the computer right now won't be there in another week or two but in the meantime it's been really nice at least not stressing out over space limitations while working with my various files.

 

[MBAir2010]

The day that I bought my M1 16" MBP with the 4 TB SSD/storage, I had this thought spinning around in my head, "Am I overreaching, is this really necessary for what I do with a computer?"

Hello, ClixPix
what did that "about your Mac storage bar" look like when you launched the MacBook?
Kinda cool seeing way over 3TB of free space on a laptop!
enjoy!

 

[collin_]

I went with 1TB for my 16.2" MacBook Pro because, although I loathe Apple's insane storage upgrade prices and prefer using external SSDs for most of my data anyway, it just didn't feel right to buy a $2,500 with 512GB of storage. And I do need some amount of breathing room even though I put most of my stuff on external drives.

They are so ******* nasty for selling a $2,500 laptop with 512GB of storage, though -- especially considering today's NAND prices.

 

[bradman83]

I'm a photography hobbyist and my raw image library going back to 2011 weighs in at around 460 GB so a 1 TB drive is a sweet spot for my use case. My internal drive on my 14" M1 Pro MBP still has 300+ GB available.

I also use external drives as archival storage and to keep projects I'm not actively working on. I made my own external SSD using the Sabrent tool-free USB-C enclosure and a mid-range 2 TB M2 SSD (the Sabrent enclosure operates at the full 10 Gbps on Apple silicon Macs; some external USB drives and enclosures are gimped to 5 Gbps due to the way the M1 and M2's USB controller handles dual lane USB signaling, something that wasn't an issue on Intel Macs). While not as fast as internal storage it's still plenty speedy for my needs. If my photo library grows to the point that I run low on space I can move the older shots to the external drive with cloud backup and only keep more recent shots on my laptop.

 

[Clix Pix]

Hello, ClixPix
what did that "about your Mac storage bar" look like when you launched the MacBook?
Kinda cool seeing way over 3TB of free space on a laptop!
enjoy!

I have no idea, as I was not paying attention to that, was just trying to get the new computer set up. I did everything manually and that takes a while. Now, yes, I can look at my Mac's icon on my desktop and see that, yep, in spite of all that I've loaded into her, both during the setup process and the later actual usage, I've got just over three TB of free space on her. Wheeeeee......!

 

[Konrad]

Of course you can.