Finally updating my 2014 MacBook Air. This is what I travel with. Generally after a day of shooting I download cards to an external hard drive. I do not really edit while traveling, mainly just deleting bad images and video clips. Will load Photoshop and Bridge on it. Maybe FCPX...But all editing happens at home on the iMac. Back from 3wks in Alberta, BC and Alaska and came home with a terabyte of images, lol.

On a budget and now need new portable hard drive/s and card readers, etc...Is 256gb enough?

Thanks!

Hi @aquabluedreams - congrats on your upcoming new laptop! The new ones are very impressive.

I totally get being in a budget. With that said, sadly we cannot upgrade the drive space later. I always carry additional external SSD drives, but it is convenient to have some drive space even if you don’t have your extra drive with you.

For that reason, invest in the 512GB drive. It may hurt a bit initially, but you’ll be happy over the long run. After all, this is not a frequent purchase. Your last laptop lasted you 11 years. The larger drive now will help you maximize the longevity of your new machine as well.

Enjoy!

Chip

Yes, I definitely second the 512GB SSD hard drive if you can.
I'm on a refurbished 2017 macbook air bought in Thailand in 2020, and it's still fine, but will definitely need to update at some point.

I can edit 4K 8bit video files by running FCPX on an external Samsung SSD which helps, but the chipset is too old to read recent codecs like HEVC (example GoPro 4k files), so I edit those with proxy files.
And I can't edit in Resolve because the chipset is too old for optimised playback (FCPX integration is doing an amazing jo)...

If you drop below 20/30 GB of free space on the internal hard drive it slows down performance, so get the space if you can.

If you are not going to edit then it really doesn't matter, you are basically using it to talk to external drives that you will download later. If you are going to edit then get a bigger drive. The 512 drive is like $200 more than the 256 (which is robbery, 512 GB SS drives are like $30). But if you dive a lot say 100 dives per year and you keep it 5 years then the per dive cost is 6500 Rupiah or about 40 cents.

Bill

I did similar to you a few months ago.

I had an older MacBook Air, which was used for travel, downloading onto an external SSD and maybe half edit some shots for fun whilst away, but serious processing done at home

I went for a MacBook Pro this time due to the extra port meaning I can charge, download and use the external SSD all at the same time

I went for 512 and have downloaded PS, LR and photo mechanic which takes up about 110GB of hard drive on the MacBook, so could probably have gone for the 256 and got away with it.

Just a few figures for you to think over

Mike

Thanks, in the end went with the MacBook air at 256 and purchased a couple of external SSD hard drives. Regardless it seems to be working much better than the 2014 version, lol.