How much flash storage does your laptop have? (2015)

I thought it'd be interesting to take a poll in the spirit of the "How much RAM" polls since flash storage is becoming pretty mainstream now.

For in-between capacities round to the nearest size logarithmically. Fortunately for those that can't do maths, I've given each category an applicable range given in mathematical notation interval in order to cover all possible configurations. So for example if you have a 180GB SSD, you would vote for 128GB. If you have 190GB, then you vote for 256GB.

Hard drive users are welcome to vote for <23GB

Rules are similar:
If you have more than one laptop, then please vote according to the specs of your primary laptop.
If you have multiple SSDs in your primary laptop you may add together all capacities.
Only drives hooked to internal buses count, e.g. no SD cards, external SSDs, thumb drives, etc.
Hybrid drives or SSD cache solutions are welcome to vote by counting only the NAND portion. Most hybrid drives will probably fall under <23GB.
If you somehow have a drive with super experimental non volatile storage tech (RRAM, PRAM, etc.), you're welcome to vote as well

 

I have 128GB right now, but just ordered an upgrade to 250GB so that's my vote. I'm betting 256 is the sweet spot right now.

 

1tb 850 evo

 

Samsung EVO 250GB in my clevo and a rather slow 128GB oem in my yoga 2 11.

I really want to stick one of those NVMe PCIe SSDs into my clevo, but I'm really struggling on justifying such a purchase. I guess I'll wait for them to become more standard and drop in price.

 

~500GB in all PCs

 

I really can't cast a vote...since I've got a couple of old ThinkPads with Intel 64GB SLC drives...then again, my workstation sports 960GB in the main bay + 512 GB mSATA and there's a machine matching just about every other poll option currently running in this household...definitely don't have anything with 2TB or more, though...

 

76 GB--a 44 GB boot SSD and a 32 GB SD card that stays in the laptop's SD slot.

 

OPs description excludes SD cards FYI.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

512GB for me: a 256GB 2.5" Samsung 830 as an OS drive and a 256GB mSATA Crucial M4 as a storage drive. I'm considering upgrades, though (when I get more money)

 

512GB for me also: an 840 EVO mSATA drive and an 840 PRO SATA drive. Probably going to purchase a 512 GB drive before the year is out (still undetermined though).

 

Don't do it. Get a 1TB (or higher) instead.

 

It would make way more sense! Now I can purchase guilt free, which is awesome. Much appreciated!

 

I don't actually have any flash storage - SSDs or otherwise - in any of my laptops. I'm currently sporting a 250 GB spinner in my main laptop, and a 160 GB spinner in my older laptop. I've thought about getting an SSD for one or both of them. I do have one for my desktop, at 240 GB. But I use the desktop 85-90% of the time, so laptop upgrades are low priority.

We'll see what it is next summer though. Once 500 GB drives start hitting the low-$100s price range, it's going to get tougher to resist swinging by Micro Center and picking one up one day.

 

Same amount it had in 2012: 3x 256 GB.

 

1TB 840 EVO as in signature. I should swap it out to my other laptop one of these days. Too lazy...

~Aeny

 

2TB = (2*512GB + 1*1024GB) in active use.

Also one additional spare 512GB drive sitting idly for future use, as my current laptop is unable to take more than one PCIe M.2. drive at a time.

I permanently banished HDD's from my laptops back in January 2013 when I went from a 1TB 5400rpm HDD to a Crucial M4 256GB SSD. It was worth it, despite having much less storage space!

 

I have to say I'm surprised 512 GB seems to be the sweet spot. SSDs seem to have gone more mainstream than I thought, at least among this crowd.

 

It's the sweet spot for perf/price and capacity/price

 

Considering that many don't OP as much as I do or recommend (or at all...) this is not surprising to me.

After OP'ing, that is roughly the true capacity that is available to Windows and the user (+- ~150GB, depending on the OP % and the drive in question).

See:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review/2


In the link above in the third and fourth graphs the non OP'd 850 Pro 2TB model drops to less than 10K IOPS in about 10 minutes of use and significantly below 10K after a couple of more minutes. This is from a high of almost 36K IOPS. An ~4x drop in performance using the drive as it is advertised in about ten minutes (sigh... how I hate marketing...).

Similarly, the last graph shows it hovering under 10K IOPS between 50 and ~57 minutes.

With only 25% OP'ing (I recommend ~30% (actual I use; closer to 33% or higher)), the performance of the drive increases substantially and becomes very 'consistent' (or at least shows a straight line, more or less) in the third graph and can now consistently reach ~36K IOPS for well past an hour (time estimated, by the graph markings shown).

With the last graph showing only a few minutes near the end of their test (yeah; I wish they wouldn't use high QD too...), the jump is very dramatic. From under 10K IOPS to ~36K IOPS for almost the duration of their test (less ~50 seconds).

Using an SSD without OP'ing 25% or more is what I consider a waste (leaving performance on the table for mere capacity...).

That ~512GB true user capacity is what I found to be the sweet spot for me almost two years ago (19+ months?) - but I need the 1TB drives to get me there; after OP'ing.

Gaining higher capacity by compromising drive performance is never a good tradeoff for a productivity based system. Even for SSD's that still manage to outperform an HDD (in synthetic tests). First rule is to always benefit from the 'promise' of what you're buying. With SSD's, that promise is only reached when they are OP'd - just like HDD's are still required to be partitioned, short stroked and defragged to perform optimally, even today, too.