512?

@manton Perhaps you could get an external SSD and use it to move less used/less important stuff off of your main drive?

@fahrni I work remotely so often that managing external drives can be a bit clunky. I do have a couple nice external SSDs, though.

@jemostrom 1 TB. Honestly should’ve sprung for 4 TB.

@manton Perhaps the lesson is not to cheap out on hardware you really need? and just order an M2 MacBook Pro with a 4TB drive now and be more productive.

@manton dang that’s a lot of space. 1 TB is what I need in the computer, and I have a lot of crap.

To be fair all my music is on an external drive because I’m pushing 700 GB. I guess I could avoid that with a bigger drive…

😁 at work I got 512 for my 16” - enough for what I need there. At home I got a Mini with 512 … and a selection of SSDs and too few USB connectors 😁

I prefer to spend the money on a NAS.
I wouldn’t go for the lowest storage for my Mac, but I’m not sure 4TB is necessary. But then I rely on a constant connection to the internet - either to access my NAS for archival stuff or iCloud.

@ezwal I try to keep everything on my computer and not on external drives except for backups and long-term archiving, so that changes my requirements a little.

@frankreiff That’s stupidly expensive though, and for many literally way out of budget.

I know Apple loves their margins, but considering what SSDs actually cost lately, it’s just insulting now.

@manton Not going to happen for me with TB of music and more importantly photography. I have a desktop so external drives for some stuff isn’t a big deal.

Work laptop is good with 1 TB as I have no media to speak of there. Just data.

Apple needs to reduce pricing on RAM and SSDs. Too many tough decisions at purchase with no ability to upgrade later.

@manton Is it feasible to upgrade the SSD or is it too tightly integrated? I thought that in the Intel machines it is still doable (just about).

@kevinteljeur My understanding is that it’s impossible to upgrade.

@manton Ouch! I upgraded to the 16” M1 Max (after helping my mother get the smaller one and experiencing teh snappy, a long-lost sensation, and because my Intel MBP was struggling with Teams and flickering touchbar) and I’m acutely aware that everything useful is probably printed on a single stick nestled between the batteries.

I thought about replacing the touchbar but you can imagine what’s like on iFixit. And the risk!

@manton I wonder if, since it’s out of warranty, if you can crack the case and install a new SSD?

One thing I discovered with my 2015 MBP was it has to be a genuine Apple SSD if you want to install modern OS releases.

@torb Yes, it’s insulting.. then again not being able to use your work machine fully also sucks.

@manton Love my 2020 Intel 16” MBP but I carefully planned my needs & got 4TB of storage. Digitizing 27 years of film, need my MBP to display edited photos exactly the same as 27” Intel iMac. But I’ll have to upgrade sometime 🙁

I heard it from somewhere, check how much you use and then multiply it by 2 or 4. I have upgraded from 256 to 1TB MBP M1.

@ezwal you also can stream it from iTunes Match, just an options ($25 a year).

@yurkevich Absolutely! Master copy of my music at home, all other devices get streamed via iTunes Match.

@GeekAndDad very interesting, upgradable external SSD, and the prices are good. Thanks for sharing.

@vishae FWIW, I just built out a NAS recently and it’s been the best digital decision I’ve made in a long while: can host Wordpress, my own mail server and vpn, and store my quickly growing collection of films and music. I’m now working on how to safely access them when I’m traveling abroad.

@70BPM and don’t forget the redundancy if you set up RAID. If one drive does, you can replace it and the NAS would restore the data on the dead drive.

@vishae indeed. I’m running a RAID-5 setup with one offline backup and one online backup. 💪🏼