The stickiest question for a potential MacBook Air buyer — especially for those switching from PCs to Macs — is if 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage will be enough for a new MacBook Air. It’s a tough question, but the memory and the storage are really separate issues. So let’s talk 4GB of memory first.
- If you do processor-intensive work like video editing and app development but don’t need better graphics (or you just don’t want the extra size and weight of the 16-inch Pro), the.
- Apple’s MacBook Air is a solid and reliable laptop for you, especially it is a device that is using the solid-state drive (SSD) as the data storage drive. Compared with the traditional hard disk drive, SSD is much faster and durable.
- Apple’s MacBook Air has always been a solid and reliable little laptop — even more so when the company ditched the hard drive that was in the original for solid state storage.
- Feb 23, 2015 How to upgrade your MacBook Air with more storage Back up! Before you do anything else, back up your Mac. Use Time Machine or another backup method to make sure that. Build a USB drive. Install the replacement SSD in the external enclosure using the supplied screwdrivers.
Now that Apple has standardized on fast flash-based SSD drives, Mac lovers must pay attention to the amount of storage they need before they buy a new MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. The trouble is, while built-in SSD drives in MacBooks provide awesome performance, they are stingy on storage.
New laptops — the problem isn’t limited to Apple — now come with 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB flash-based SSD drives as standard configurations. And many of these laptops are not easy to upgrade in the future like older hard drives used to be.
Here is how to tell if 256GB is enough storage for you. Mac os x tiger iso.
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Do you take a lot of photos or video?
If you are a shutterbug — or have an iPhone 6 or iPhone 7 — and you can imagine yourself taking a lot of photos and video that you want to keep forever on your MacBook, you should try to figure out how much storage your current photos and videos take up.
If you don’t have much right now, 256GB will likely be plenty of storage for you for the foreseeable future.
If you have a lot of photos like me — I have more than 20,000 photos and videos in my iPhoto library, which takes up more than 100GB of space — then 256GB of storage on a MacBook Pro is flirting with danger. Why? I also have dozens of movies and some TV shows that I like to keep downloaded and handy directly on my MacBook Pro.
Of course, my habits are changing and so are the habits of others — for instance, I’m starting to stream more videos from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video instead of buying and downloading them. If you’re streaming content instead of buying it, 256GB is probably sufficient.
Storage Eaters: Movies and TV Shows
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While I’m watching more streamed content, I still like to buy and own some shows and movies. Consequently, I have too much to store on my MacBook directly, so I’ve saved hundreds of gigabytes of space by moving some photos, home video, television shows, and movies to a fast external hard drive. I just move the stuff I want to save — but won’t access often — to the external hard drive. It’s a peace-of-mind thing, really. I could probably delete it all and still live happily.
Here’s another space-saving tidbit: If you have downloaded TV shows from Apple iTunes — or whole seasons of TV shows — you can safely delete these shows from your Mac. As long as you have your active Apple ID and iTunes account, Apple will know you bought those shows and provide you the ability to re-download them at will . . . or stream them to your Apple TV. I’ve personally deleted episodes of Homeland, The Walking Dead, Life, Firefly, and Castle with no ill effects. True Detective is still on there, though. I’ll be watching that series again soon, I’m sure.
Wild Card Storage
Personal photos and video, along with purchased movies and TV shows, are the biggest storage culprits for most people. If you get a handle on these files, you’ll know if 256GB is enough.
But, there are a few wild cards. If you download a lot of apps for multiple iOS devices in your family, and these family members are all downloading and storing large multi-media book files, videos, and iOS games (the graphically rich games can blow past 1GB easily these days) you can generate a surprising amount of iOS device backup storage and a large iTunes app library. Again, there are ways to delete and trim this storage, but it’s something to be aware of.
Mac gamers can start eating up storage fast, but gamers are usually more in tune with their special needs.
If you get into creating and editing movies — say by generating a lot of footage with a GoPro or a waterproof rugged camera — your smartest move will be to invest in a fast external hard drive and store much of your video on it.
As for standard documents, most Microsoft Office, word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations take up very little storage space on a typical laptop — even for workaholics.
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How to Choose the Right Mac System
All in all, 256GB is plenty of room for most every Mac lover . . . unless you also have a large iPhoto library and take a lot of photos and video — and you know that you will continue to take a lot of photos and video. If this is the case, your decision gets a bit more complicated. You can:
- Choose a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air with 512GB of storage (about a $300 upgrade)
- Choose an iMac, which comes with a 500GB hard drive or more
- Choose an external drive or high-capacity thumb drive to go with a MacBook
- Choose an iMac for the heavy-lifting at home and get a MacBook Air or iPad for on-the-go computing
For instance, you can get a 21.5-inch iMac with 1TB of storageas well as an iPad for less than the cost of a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. Or you could get a Mac mini for local home storage use and get a MacBook Air for mobile. If you’re in a family situation, the iMac method is a good plan. For most individuals, I tend to recommend just getting a versatile 13-inch MacBook Pro or 15-inch if your budget allows it.
The last option is to offload your personal photos to a cloud-based online storage service, but if you have a lot of photos, you’ll be paying for it each month in installments for years (which is why I like onboard storage and external drives).
Special Note: If you already have a newer MacBook without enough storage, you still have two good storage upgrade options, both of which use tiny flash-based drives in the shape of camera memory cards. They plug into the SDXC card slot on your Mac. For all intents and purposes, the Transcend JetDrive Lite acts like a little USB thumb drive — but it fits flush into the SDXC card slot instead. The TarDisk Pear system, on the other hand, also uses the SDXC card slot but it combines with your built-in storage to form a single “fused” drive. If you want a near-permanent, easy solution, the TarDisk Pear system might be your best bet.
Optimised Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, films, email attachments and other files that you rarely use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays exactly where you last saved it, and will download when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimised versions of your photos.
* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.
Find out how much storage is available on your Mac
Choose Apple menu > About This Mac and then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.
Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is only available in macOS Sierra or later.
Manage storage on your Mac
The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimising your storage. If some recommendations have already been turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.
Store in iCloud
Click the Store in iCloud button and then choose from these options:
- Desktop and Documents. Store all files from these two locations in iCloud Drive. When storage space is needed, only the files you recently opened are kept on your Mac, so that you can easily work offline. Files stored only in iCloud show a download icon , which you can double-click to download the original file. Learn more about this feature.
- Photos. Store all original, full-resolution photos and videos in iCloud Photos. When storage space is needed, only space-saving (optimised) versions of photos are kept on your Mac. To download the original photo or video, just open it.
- Messages. Store all messages and attachments in iCloud. When storage space is needed, only the messages and attachments you recently opened are kept on your Mac. Learn more about Messages in iCloud.
Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50 GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.
Optimise Storage
Click the Optimise button, then choose from these options.
- Automatically remove watched films and TV programmes. When storage space is needed, films or TV programmes that you have purchased from the iTunes Store and have already watched will be removed from your Mac. Click the download icon next to a film or TV programme to download it again.
- Download only recent attachments. Mail automatically downloads only the attachments that you have recently received. You can manually download any attachments at any time by opening the email or attachment, or saving the attachment to your Mac.
- Don't automatically download attachments. Mail only downloads an attachment when you open the email or attachment, or save the attachment to your Mac.
Optimising storage for films, TV programmes and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.
![Macbook Macbook](https://s3-storage.textopus.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/1186654/19115907/iphone-xr.jpg)
Empty Bin Automatically
Empty Bin Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Bin for more than 30 days.
Reduce Clutter
Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you may no longer need. Click the Review Files button and then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation or Bin.
Macbook
You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.
Learn how to re-download apps, music, films, TV programmes and books.
Where to find the settings for each feature
The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control these settings directly within each app.
- If you're using macOS Catalina, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Apple ID, then select iCloud in the sidebar: Store in iCloud turns on the Optimise Mac Storage setting on the right. Then click Options next to iCloud Drive: Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders setting. To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive.
In macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click iCloud and then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimise Mac Storage settings. - In Photos, choose Photos > Preferences and then click iCloud. Store in iCloud selects iCloud Photos and Optimise Mac Storage.
- In Messages, choose Messages > Preferences, then click iMessage. Store in iCloud selects Enable Messages in iCloud.
- If you're using macOS Catalina, open the Apple TV app, choose TV > Preferences from the menu bar and then click Files. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV programmes”.
In macOS Mojave or earlier, open iTunes, choose iTunes > Preferences from the menu bar and then click Advanced. Optimise Storage selects “Automatically delete watched films and TV programmes”. - In Mail, choose Mail > Preferences from the menu bar and then click Accounts. In the Account Information section on the right, Optimise Storage sets the Download Attachments menu to either Recent or None.
Empty Bin Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Bin Automatically selects “Remove items from the Bin after 30 days”.
Other ways that macOS automatically helps to save space
With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:
- Detects duplicate downloads in Safari, keeping only the most recent version of the download
- Reminds you to delete used app installers
- Removes old fonts, languages and dictionaries that aren't being used
- Clears caches, logs and other unnecessary data when storage space is needed
How to free up storage space manually
Even without using the Optimised Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:
- Music, films and other media can use a lot of storage space. Learn how to delete music, films and TV programmes from your device.
- Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Bin, then emptying the Bin. The Downloads folder is good place to look for files that you may no longer need.
- Move files to an external storage device.
- Compress files.
- Delete unneeded email: In the Mail app, choose Mailbox > Erase Junk Mail. If you no longer need the email in your Deleted Items mailbox, choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items.
Extra Storage For Macbook Air
Learn more
Best External Storage For Macbook Air
- The Storage pane of About This Mac is the best way to determine the amount of storage space available on your Mac. Disk Utility and other apps may show storage categories, such as Not Mounted, VM, Recovery, Other Volumes, Free or Purgeable. Don't rely on these categories to understand how to free up storage space or how much storage space is available for your data.
- When you duplicate a file on an APFS-formatted volume, that file doesn't use additional storage space on the volume. Deleting a duplicate file only frees up the space required by any data that you might have added to the duplicate. If you no longer need any copies of the file, you can recover all of the storage space by deleting both the duplicate and the original file.
- If you're using a pro app and Optimise Mac Storage, learn how to make sure that your projects are always on your Mac and able to access their files.