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Xray36 · May 19, 2006, 06:32 PM

I am planning on buying a new macbook, but i don't know what size hardrive to get so does anyone know aproximately how much space the mac os x takes up by itself?

chipchen · May 19, 2006, 07:41 PM

3-6 depending on how much of the optional stuff you put on it. Optional stuff like language support, printer drivers, garageband song demo stuff, etc, etc...

If you do a fresh install with the minimal stuff, it's not much. Remember, formatting take s coupla gigs away too.

With the prices they charge for upgrades, you can always just buy yourself another larger drive later.

fesdds · May 19, 2006, 08:31 PM

I was shocked when I got my macbook yesterday and out of the 60gig harddrive only 38.5 gigs were left. I guess I will have to trash a lot of extra junk.

ghporter · May 19, 2006, 08:42 PM

Welcome to the MacNN Forums! I would like you to read the posted announcements and rules at the top of each forum-they're very helpful. I mention this because the title you used for this thread is anything but useful. EVERYBODY's questions are "important questions," so saying you have an important question can get your thread ignored. Use a descriptive title like "What size drive to get in my MacBook?" It's really that simple.

As for advice, I always recommend bigger. As fesdds points out, sometimes a drive can fill up really quickly, and it's always harder to change out a laptop drive than to get a big one to start with. You can also use external drives, but they kind of defeat the portability issue with a laptop.

harrisjamieh · May 20, 2006, 03:49 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

and it's always harder to change out a laptop drive than to get a big one to start with.

Harder? Its easier to replace the HDs in these things than it is the RAM!!

Gamoe · May 20, 2006, 04:04 AM

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

Harder? Its easier to replace the HDs in these things than it is the RAM!!

My thought as well. jladd5, in previous Apple portables the hard drive has been difficult to upgrade, because it's been hard to get to. But you can get to the new MacBook's hard drive and repalce it with a larger capacity one really easily. Apple charges a big premium for hard drive upgrades.

You can get the same hard drive for much cheaper elsewhere and just replace your MacBook's hard drive with that one (and sell the original one, or something).

michaelb · May 20, 2006, 04:27 AM

I'm amazed how many people don't realize how much is lost by converting a marketing GB to a real GB.

In marketing-speak, a "GB" is a billion bytes, or 1,000,000,000 bytes.

But in computer-speak, this is only 1,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 = 953.7 MB.

So, when you buy a "60 GB" drive, you're only actually getting 55.8 GB to store data with.

In other words, 7% of your drive is taken up by false advertising...!

analogika · May 20, 2006, 04:51 AM

Replacing the hard drive in the MacBook takes about two minutes for the completely inexperienced layman.

It is very very simple to upgrade this later on and stick your old hard drive in an external casing as a backup disk.

elcheapo · May 20, 2006, 05:27 AM

Remember that you will need to buy an SATA notebook drive for your upgrade, good luck on pricing...

harrisjamieh · May 20, 2006, 05:37 AM

Yes but by the time one uses up 60 GB of HD space, the prices would have dramatically dropped

elcheapo · May 20, 2006, 05:53 AM

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

Yes but by the time one uses up 60 GB of HD space, the prices would have dramatically dropped

Not to sure about that, there is an awful lot of pr0n to download

ghporter · May 20, 2006, 09:23 AM

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

Harder? Its easier to replace the HDs in these things than it is the RAM!!

So max out the RAM when you buy it too!

harrisjamieh · May 20, 2006, 09:52 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

So max out the RAM when you buy it too!

Why? When its so easy to upgrade it. When I said its as easy to upgrade the HD as it is the RAM, I meant the RAM is so easy to upgrade, hence the HD is so easy to upgrade

jamil5454 · May 20, 2006, 10:02 AM

Man, the MacBooks are a dream. Still deciding whether I should sell my iBook and go with one now or wait until next summer.

Anyway, I'd buy the stock config, get a 1GB stick of RAM, and go from there. In a year or so, you can get another 1GB stick to max the RAM, and put in a (hopefully cheap) 100GB 7200 rpm drive to breath some life into the machine.

amazing · May 20, 2006, 10:08 AM

Welcome to the forums: For your first post, this is an excellent orientation on how discussions go astray, all based on the respondents' personal biases, whether towards sarcasm or high horses. It happens.

So, back to your question: If you've got an Apple Store or a CompUSA nearby, go in and find any MacBook model. "Get Info" on the HD (select the HD by clicking once, then find the command under the File menu) which will give the size of the HD.

Double click the HD to open what's called a Finder window. Select the name of the HD in the top left column, and you'll see the amount of disk space remaining across the bottom of the window. Subtract the amount from the size of the HD, and you'll have the amount of HD space taken by a relatively plain vanilla installation.

This plain vanilla installation contains some large demo applications, and all the iLife applications, etc.

Next, when you add RAM, the "safe sleep" part of OS X reserves an amount of HD space equivalent to the total amount of RAM plus 750 MB. So if you max out the RAM at 2 GB, you can subtract 2.5 GB from the above amount.

Lastly, you should always leave 15% HD space for OS X to function correctly. Approx 10 GB free space (60 GB HD.)

The remainder is what you have left for music, films, projects....

production_coordinator · May 20, 2006, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by jamil5454

Man, the MacBooks are a dream. Still deciding whether I should sell my iBook and go with one now or wait until next summer.

Anyway, I'd buy the stock config, get a 1GB stick of RAM, and go from there. In a year or so, you can get another 1GB stick to max the RAM, and put in a (hopefully cheap) 100GB 7200 rpm drive to breath some life into the machine.

I'm very happy with my previous version iBook, but the new MacBook does look just that much better. I paid $999 for mine, and for the $99 price bump, you get a number of enhancements (remote/iSight to name a few). I think Apple is really setting itself up for some great sales. That remote would be great for presentations.

Sure, nobody is happy that they are using integrated graphics, but now that we have a great CPU, I'm comfortable with the graphics capabilities. I only wish they would offer a video upgrade option to keep the complainers at bay.

Oh well.

Gamoe · May 20, 2006, 02:18 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

So max out the RAM when you buy it too!

Not a bad idea, either, jladd5. The more RAM you have in your MacBook, the happier it (and you) will be.

Originally Posted by michaelb

I'm amazed how many people don't realize how much is lost by converting a marketing GB to a real GB.

[rant] I know. I've complained about this, but it doesn't seem to change the marketing spin. I was even in a required basic computer class where the teacher/book claimed that a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes... chopping off a whole 24 bytes!!-- This was expanded to all HDD measurements. I complained. All she said was the it was "okay if it was that for me". Apparently, now measurements are subjective! That kind of misses the whole point of a measurement, now doesn't it?!

The sad part is that since these measurements use metric system prefixes which by all means indicate said numbers, users just learning this have no reason to doubt it, even though it is clearly different in computers. Yet still, the correct and accepted computer measurement is used for RAM, so now we have two incompatible definitions co-existing. But then you have flash drive makers advertising erroneous using the metric system definition, even though flash memory is closer to RAM than a hard drive, so it's a whole mess.

They're trying to rewrite the measurements for the sake of advertising. I wonder just how upset people would get if gas stations suddenly tried to redefine what a gallon (US) or liter (elsewhere) is. [/rant]

ghporter · May 20, 2006, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

Why? When its so easy to upgrade it. When I said its as easy to upgrade the HD as it is the RAM, I meant the RAM is so easy to upgrade, hence the HD is so easy to upgrade

Not having one, I took the opposite meaning from your post. And having Apple stand behind both the drive and the RAM is a nice thing. But if it's that easy to upgrade the drive, that might change a lot of things...

Xray36 · May 21, 2006, 02:45 PM

Thanks alot guys you really helped me out.At this point i will have to wait till the end of this summer to buy a macbook

, so i thought i wold research and see which is more bang for my buck.I had planned on buying a macbook pro, but when i had heard of heating issues and the fact that its going to take me a long long time to save up enough money to buy one i decided to wait and see what the ibook replacements would be like.I am truly amazed with them.I am still stuck with windows, but have used one mac and completely fell in love with them.Also srry about the title deal.

Gamoe · May 21, 2006, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by jladd5

At this point i will have to wait till the end of this summer to buy a macbook

Don't worry, jladd! It's always better to wait out a new system for a few months or a revision at least. It's just that impatience and sometimes need gets the better of a lot of us (most of us?) here. So, though lack of funds may force us to wait a bit, just think that there's also an upside to that!

Originally Posted by jladd5

I am still stuck with windows, but have used one mac and completely fell in love with them.

Yes, that happens.

Good luck on your saving (I will be doing that as well!), and let us know when you've got your new MacBook!