Is a 128gb SSD drive enough on a laptop now?

NIMAN

Purchasing a laptop for someone heading to university, and would like to get one with SSD but they are pricier.

Wondering if a 128gb SSD is sufficient once you load Win10, Microsoft Office and whatever essentials apps/programs they might need?

I'm sure this will eat up a fair bit of space.

Trasna1

Short answer is no.
128gb will be filled in no time. Cloud storage is no substitute for having files locally.

NIMAN

So from what I can see, Win10 is approx 20gb.

Office appears to be around the 4gb mark.

So I'm guessing there should be enough, assuming they don't fill it with too much stuff like movies or music files (which they can always keep offline on a memory stick if need be).

thekooman

i have a 128GB SSD in the home laptop... its not enough. a 480GB is about 70 or 80 pounds now on amazon.

Alanstrainor

It depends. I run a system with a 64GB SSD running Windows 10 Pro and office with other apps and it is fine. I do not have any other pictures/music etc on this drive. I would say 128GB is fine if your requirements are low. It is always advisable to get the largest disk you can afford.

it's ok if you're not going to be storing movies, tv series etc and not installing big games.
if it's honestly just win 10 and office and some other stuff that's not huge it would. just judge realistically.

TerrorFirmer

More than enough for standard use like you've described unless you want to store movies and other big files.

my3cents

Thats plenty of room if your organised. I have a 256Gb in a laptop and I've never had near 128Gb on it yet, I do however move off pictures, video, audio and downloads to external storage as soon as I've finished with them.

NIMAN

Thanks folks, think I will go with 128gb.
Should be plenty, can't see it being loaded with a lot of TV shows, films etc, so should suffice.

OldMrBrennan83

Are you subscribing to the MS Office? You'll get 1TB of OneDrive storage along with that which is worth bearing in mind. I bought my laptop with a 512GB SSD in it and I have zero need for that amount of space because I keep documents and pictures in cloud storage.

NIMAN

Its for a university 1st year student, so I would guess they will have to buy Office too, so assume they will get the 1tb storage deal.

ED E

128GB is fine but be realistic with your numbers.

128 GB = 114GB formatted
Take 5GB for a recovery partition
Take 30GB for windows (20GB balloons quite quickly with WinSXS etc)
Take 10GB for crucial applications

So really its a ~ 70GB workspace.

my3cents

ED E wrote: »

128GB is fine but be realistic with your numbers.

128 GB = 114GB formatted
Take 5GB for a recovery partition
Take 30GB for windows (20GB balloons quite quickly with WinSXS etc)
Take 10GB for crucial applications

So really its a ~ 70GB workspace.

As a "workspace" thats fine, if you want to store all your downloaded movies, audio, you pictures and documents then its obviously not enough.

NIMAN

my3cents wrote: »

As a "workspace" thats fine, if you want to store all your downloaded movies, audio, you pictures and documents then its obviously not enough.

I don't think there will be a of that, so 70gb will suffice.

galwaynative

NIMAN wrote: »

Its for a university 1st year student, so I would guess they will have to buy Office too, so assume they will get the 1tb storage deal.

Just a heads up that students will be able to get office 365 for free via their college student accounts! As far as I know its five downloads for different devices.

spurious

There is also LibreOffice which is free.

spurious

spurious wrote: »

There is also LibreOffice which is free.

yes and it's decent enough. only if you're doing advanced excel stuff and/or are stuck on powerpoint for presentations do you really need ms office imo

mirrorwall14

I’ve been on a 128gb for daily use at home/work and have never run out of space. I use Spotify and Netflix so very little music/movies stored locally and have an education account on google drive with unlimited storage.

TomOnBoard

glasso wrote: »

yes and it's decent enough. only if you're doing advanced excel stuff and/or are stuck on powerpoint for presentations do you really need ms office imo

Agree about many of the free packages being great. However, some colleges/course still insist on MSOffice...

TomOnBoard

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Agree about many of the free packages being great. However, some colleges/course still insist on MSOffice...

you can still save in ms office formats.

I guess part of college's focus on ms office is that it's what most likely would be used in a workplace - or at least that would be a reason that actually makes sense! (so being an academic institution is probably not the reason!)

Twenty Grand

glasso wrote: »

you can still save in ms office formats.

I guess part of college's focus on ms office is that it's what most likely would be used in a workplace - or at least that would be a reason that actually makes sense! (so being an academic institution is probably not the reason!)

MS Office will be free with your student email.

In reality it wont be the only application you're running though. Don't know the course, but you're going to have a heap of stuff on your laptop.

Cloud storage is only as good as your internet.

smelly sock

NIMAN wrote: »

Purchasing a laptop for someone heading to university, and would like to get one with SSD but they are pricier.

Wondering if a 128gb SSD is sufficient once you load Win10, Microsoft Office and whatever essentials apps/programs they might need?

I'm sure this will eat up a fair bit of space.

Purchase an external HDD or even a decent soze 128 gb sd card provided the laptop has an sd card port which it probably does.

User wont know themselves with the ssd.

colm_mcm

100+gb flash drives are so cheap nowadays, there’s always options for storage.