Do we all know how much 128 GB is? If we need to break it into bytes, 128 GB is said to be 131,072 megabytes, 134,217,728 Kilobytes, or even 137,438,953,472 bytes. Does that look like a huge memory? Whether this is sufficient for us or not is decided majorly by the purpose of the laptop in use.
Present-day laptop memory has been replaced by solid-state drives (SSD) instead of traditional hard disc drives (HDD). SSD does not have any moving parts and is said to be of faster and longer performance. Though they are more responsive, SSDs are very costlier than HDDs.
How much memory do I need on my laptop? This question is asked by so many people who are planning to buy a new laptop computer for their needs.
Is 128 GB memory enough for Laptops?
Let’s now discuss whether a 128GB SSD is enough for a laptop.
Even when we get a 128 GB SSD laptop, it is often seen that the complete 128 GB is not free to use. The partition management, windows recovery environment, and some support tools are already available on the laptop. These hidden or invisible partitions reduce the space to 120 or 119 GB.
Considering Windows 10 installed on a laptop, the space used by the operating system would be around 20-30 GB. Thus, the remaining memory would be around 90-100 GB. Swap files, cache, and those regular windows updates will consume even more space. As a result, in a 128 GB SSD, the maximum space available for proper use is 70-80 GB.
It is advisable to install all software directly on the SSD. Install at least the most frequently used software in SSD to ensure a fast start. So, these installations will be handled within the 70-80 GB space available in our 128 GB SSD. This space will look huge if we use software like Microsoft Office or some other small ones. That is because this software does not use much memory.
A 128 GB laptop is not the appropriate choice for games. Normally, the .exe files of all the games are large. For smooth working, these games also require a lot of free space. In such cases, it is better to opt for a higher-memory SSD.
We all use laptops for storage purposes also. Nowadays, everyone has extensive media like pictures, videos, audio, and documents. Some video and audio files can be enormous. If we have to use the 128GB SSD for storage, it can go a little challenging.
As discussed above, some software can consume a lot of space. So, the space available for media storage would be very less. But there are multiple solutions for this. Listing a few of them below:
- First would be using external storage for the media files, like an external hard disc or a memory card. One benefit of using a memory card is that a large volume of data can be saved in a tiny piece of hardware, thus making it easy to carry.
- Another solution would be making maximum use of online storage. In this age of cloud storage, we can easily store a considerable amount of our media files in Google drive. If we have a Microsoft account, the 1TB storage provided by OneDrive is decent enough to save all our documents.
- Also, we can use SSD for OS and software installed and keep the traditional HDD for media storage.
Using these alternatives for storage needs, we can reserve the costly SSD space for our OS and software. And by doing so, we can improve our laptop performance too.
Well, opting for a 256 GB SSD laptop may be a better choice. We might use software with more space requirements in the future. Also, our storage concerns will be solved if we can accommodate a 256 GB laptop. That being said, the 256 GB SSD is more expensive than a 128 GB SSD.
To conclude, we can say a 128 GB SSD is very much enough for laptops, provided the availability of sufficient external or online storage space and no gaming requirements. Otherwise, the overall performance of the laptop may be hugely affected.
Summary
Even when we use a MacBook, around 30 GB is used for OS handling in the available 128 GB. We need to make room for any apps downloaded in the MacBook, for which they will work directly from the internal memory.
Again, the Mac apps cache, songs, and videos downloaded in iTunes can consume a lot of memory. So for MacBook as well, 128 GB is enough when external storage is provided.
Otherwise, it is recommended to go with a 256 GB MacBook.