How much hard drive space do you use on your laptop?

I sometimes read about people calling 60GB drives 'small'. I use 18gb on my laptop, which contains a backup of all of my documents and such from my desktop (it's about 2000 files, but they are mostly office docs and website backups). My laptop is currently an Asus W5a, but I'm shooting for a Mac as soon as this thing starts showing signs of age . In Asus' defense, the thing is holding up quite well.

I was curious to know how much space people typically use, and how you typically use it. I've never done a poll before, but I appreciate your participation!

 

I'm using about 34GBs - mostly photos & my photoshop work. Of course, there's the homework assignments, music, and actual applications. But most of it is photos and photoshop.

 

right now, on my 120GB HD I have 27GB free space. That includes an 18GB partition for XP. I take a lot of pictures and do a lot of photo editing, that plus my art and programming stuff takes up a lot of space.

 

93gb, 204gb free

 

I've used about 50 GB of my 80 GB hard drive...Photoshop work, photos, documents, they add up.

 

I have 60 gb in music.

 

have about 3 gb left of 160 gb hard drive, i use a lot of space, its annoying. also have a desktop with over 500gb and thats filling up too.

 

I need a LOT... lets keep it at that.

 

More than 180 GB

Currently 320GB 5400RPM in the single hard drive slot in my laptop.

 

I had a 160GB hdd and used it all and had to buy an external.

Music, a few movies and TV shows, games, photoshop, matlab. windows takes several gigs by itself, as does osx. i have them both installed...

 

Macbook Air 40GB and Macbook 50GB consumed out of 80GB drives on each.

 

Any chance someone could add an option to the poll for 'as much as I can get'. My MBP only has a 120gb but I have about another 2 500gb drives that I attach up to it and even that is not enough. I'm always maxed out.

 

I have a 250GB drive and have roughly used 160 on it. And right now, I do not have my Linux VM's on here nor do I have windows under bootcamp.

Before, I had about 30gb free when I did have those.

If you want to add in the space from Time Machine, that would be another 160gb or so.

 

I have a 120 and 160 external filled up as well, and a 250 that I'm working on atm.

 

thanks to all who have taken the time to enlighten me...I am clearly in the minority.

250GB is not excessive...it's just excessive for me!

I'd love to see a 30-40GB SSD drive offered that did not boost the price of a laptop through the roof...but I see that would just be too small for the majority of users.

 

Well maybe only the majority of users here on NBR, and even of those the majority haven't voted. I reckon most people on NBR are more into the laptop thing than your average laptop user, hence we are here in the 1st place. I'd love to see lower price SSD's and I really think they won't take that long to come about. We have hit 128gb 1.8" in the consumer channel (wealthy consumer channel that is) and the industrial side is exploding. As Intel look to diversify into non-processor fields the day we see 30-40GB SSd's in cheap lappys is not that far off.

 

52gb used on my base MBP

 

HD video eats up your HDD space quickly. I just filled by 200GB internal HDD the other day but since then have cleared 40GB

 

here's hoping! I also appreciate your noting the 'bias' in the sample that may be present here.

and then, once SSD gets into the mainstream, there will be something else to wait for - and on, and on, and on, and on. I've been visiting this forum pretty frequently (apple) for about a year now, and I've learned a ton! most notable is the notion to get what you need when you need it, as waiting for the next great thing is never ending...

there's the problem with buying quality; the things last too long!

 

You could always look at cheap SDHC cards if its just for storage purposes. SDHC's area already getting very cheap, even SSD's, have a look at this one

http://www.memoryc.com/externalharddrives/transcend32gbinternalssd.html

Thats a 32gb IDE SSD for €108 ex VAT ($168 US) and bear in mind this is a European price where we get screwed for everything. In the US it would be even cheaper and to a laptop OEM even less again. And i'd just like to extend my thanks to the 1980's pc clone makers for giving me the chance in 2008 to rip out my HDD or memory etc and put I something else without having to pay Steve Jobs to rob me a second time over for a new MBP. You can buy quality once and replace its intestines without ruining it. All that quality comes from a quantity of different manufacturers. Let the dissection begin. Hey Samsung, wheres that 500gb 2.5" HDD you were bull****ting about 3 months ago??

 

I have to use an external 500gb drive... I have 70gb of music, 70gb of ripped dvds, and another 80gb of photos. I only have a 120gb drive in my laptop, I'm planning on upgrading it asap.

 

thanks for the info! I dont need any more drives for storage purposes, though. I've been waiting for my Asus to show signs of age before dropping the cash on a new laptop, but the thing just keeps going - and quite well. I did bump up the ram to the max (1.25GB), as the stock 512mb did get old quick...but I didnt even need to do that until last year. I guess this shows how I use my laptop...word, excel, powerpoint, web, email, and some light development. No music, no video. nothing that requires much processing power beyond what's needed to run the OS and 3 or 4 apps simultaneously. I couldnt run Vista on the laptop very well (1.8ghz P4 processor, if I recall), but it runs XP well.

back to my reason for posting in this forum...my goal is to have a MBP, running windows via fusion/bootcamp. My development work involves MS office applications, and I like to have them work in both Mac and Windows environments. I currently develop in Windows, and test on an old G3 running an older version of OS X. It would be in my best interest to code in a Mac environment, but doing so on the old G3 is frustrating!

I hope that, by the time my Asus heads south, there will be a MBP with an SSD option, even if it is only 40 GB, as I think that given my use, that would leave me with enough room for both OS's and my files. It's a pipe dream. I do know that once I know it's time to get a new lappy, I'll buy whatever is available at the time as I am sure it will meet my needs.

 

Hitachi just announced their 320gb 7200rpm 2.5" notebook drive so for all you running out of space maybe its time you upgraded? No pricing yet.

 

I have roughly 50 GB's in music and videos stored on my desktop, and about 10 GB is used up for the development projects. 40 GB's is also reserved for a Windows XP virtual machine and Ubuntu virtual machine that I have.

 

I'm definitely watching the SSDs carefully...considering how quickly the USB flash drive prices dropped, I'm excited to watch SSDs go down in price and up in space .

 

I just upped my MacBook Pro from 160GB to 320GB last weekend. Picked the Western Digital 320GB internal drive, with a matching 320GB Passport external ... very happy with the combo. The new internal is 5400 RPM, but that doesn't bother me at all ... it's still pretty zippy (especially when it isn't 92% full!).

RAW photos and HD videos can take up a lot of space!