Article on storage for Surface RT (Engadget)

[dkp23]

I posted up a thread last week regarding storage. After the updates and installing 5 gb of music and 1gb of videos, i only had like 4 gb left of space.

That meant 28 gb was used for the OS and other stuff? 32gb not so 32gb anymore. After deleting some apps i didnt need and reduced my music, i now have 10 gb. I am quite upset of the lack of storage with so little on the tablet itself. Yes, i can get a micro sd, but should i have have to buy a $45-$60 micro sd just to add more space when i barely even used my storage on the tablet in the first place?

anyway, here is the link, you actually get 16gb of space to use after everything. Is there a way to delete the recovery tools? I have no idea how to use that anyway.


Microsoft reveals how much of Surface RT's disc space is actually yours -- Engadget

 

[VagrantWade]

Bought a 64gb SDXC card. Still more storage than an equivalent priced iPad.

 

[derek533]

Not to mention, when compared to the iPad, W8 RT is so much more robust, powerful, and useful.

We gotz tha micro-SD port, beotches!

 

[inteller]

yeah....gl installing apps on SD card..

 

[inteller]

I posted up a thread last week regarding storage. After the updates and installing 5 gb of music and 1gb of videos, i only had like 4 gb left of space.

That meant 28 gb was used for the OS and other stuff? 32gb not so 32gb anymore. After deleting some apps i didnt need and reduced my music, i now have 10 gb. I am quite upset of the lack of storage with so little on the tablet itself. Yes, i can get a micro sd, but should i have have to buy a $45-$60 micro sd just to add more space when i barely even used my storage on the tablet in the first place?

anyway, here is the link, you actually get 16gb of space to use after everything. Is there a way to delete the recovery tools? I have no idea how to use that anyway.


Microsoft reveals how much of Surface RT's disc space is actually yours -- Engadget

the recovery tools are for if your Surface gets into a completely borked state you can return it to a factory fresh condition. You delete that somehow and bork your system, you are looking at a paperweight unless you send it off to MS.

What a lot of people are missing is that you get a FULL BLOWN OS. You are not playing with some little toy that provides a boot strap for loading apps and a big blank space for you to install apps. You are working with the equiv of Windows Home Prem with a new GUI optimized for touch. All the stuff you could do with Win7 Home prem is under the hood of Surface. Imagine if Apple put OSX on a tablet, it sure as **** wouldn't take up less than 2.5 of iOS, but it can do a heck of a lot more!

Over time, if Microsoft wants to start extracting the built in bits of the OS and offering them up as apps (like accessories for ex) then the base OS image might start shrinking....but I doubt it.

 

[ZombieBacchus]

I hope Microsoft lets developers eventually offload game data and resources to the SDXC card while keeping the .exe on the Surface storage. Android used to only let you store apps on the main drive but eventually updated it so only the .exe had to be there. I never really saw any performance or any other issues with it.

I really need more room for apps especially when bigger titles from EA and Gameloft come out.

 

[dkp23]

yeah....gl installing apps on SD card..

Already well know that u cant

 

[crystal_planet]

yeah....gl installing apps on SD card..

Good luck running any programs from a secondary drive. When was the last time you ran Office from your CD drive on your laptop?

I use my sd drive for my media and that's it.



**Sent from my Windows Phone using Board Express**

 

[inteller]

that's great, you still only have 16Gb for apps.

 

[DougB541#CB]

Which as an educated consumer who figured this out before he bought his Surface.


I'm more than fine with it. Considering my iPad prior is 16 gig model which i was more than fine with as well.

If its too little, return it.

::Shrug::

 

[VagrantWade]

that's great, you still only have 16Gb for apps.

Most of the apps I have downloaded are like 2-200mb in size...

I'm not an app hoarder like my 57 year old mother.

 

[dark.davy]

Things I did to get some free space (I have the 32GB model)

1 - Remove Pre-installed apps
-The Travel App is HUGE and I didnt even know it existed (Only found it in search). I removed Finance and a few others I will never use. You can also clear the News cache within the Options I believe (News is bug too)

2 - If you do a refresh it will create a C:\Windows.old folder (of which is like 2-8gb)
-To remove it, right click on C:\ in the desktop Windows Explorer window, Go to properties, Disk Cleanup, then make sure to select "Clean up System Files" then check "Remove previous installations of Windows"

All of my Media is on my 32GB SD card though

 

[dkp23]

that's great, you still only have 16Gb for apps.

16gb for just apps is well more than enough. It sucks if you want to store stuff on your storage without buying a microsd card.

IN anycase, its not like we are going to play Crysis on this thing anyway, apps will probably be under 100 mb for the most part with graphical heavy games in the 1gb area.

 

[derek533]

that's great, you still only have 16Gb for apps.

Considering my previous tablets were an original 16gb iPad and a 16gb TP (about 14 usable), I have no complaints. Also, like vagrantwade mentioned, most apps are no more than 200mb, I have no issue with this. The micro-sd is for media storage only and along with Skydrive, is more than enough.

Again, considering the competition's operating system, W8 RT can do so much more and I'll gladly spot MS the required storage capacity if it means I truly do get to leave my lappy at home most of the time (which I now do).

 

[inteller]

you haven't downloaded many games I see.

Also, it is well known that the media cataloging situation for removeable storage is a borked kludge.

i don't disagree with the capabilities of the OS vs other platforms, but let's be honest about the crappy situation. Saying you can add 4Tb of microSD storage doesn't really mean anything if you can only use it for certain things.

 

[Reflexx]

If a consumer knows that they like to download lots of large games, then they should get the 64gb.

The 32gb is fine for most regular users.

If a person is a big tablet gamer, and wants every large game, but chose the 32gb version, shouldn't they be blaming themselves?

 

[dkp23]

If a consumer knows that they like to download lots of large games, then they should get the 64gb.

The 32gb is fine for most regular users.

If a person is a big tablet gamer, and wants every large game, but chose the 32gb version, shouldn't they be blaming themselves?

I wouldnt necessarily go that far in terms of blame, since microsoft felt that they didnt need to disclose that half of the storage would be taken up by OS and other stuff now instead of prior to launch.

I think the surface team mentioend something on an AMA reddit thread that 20 gb would be available, but im sure the average consumer is not going to go onto reddit to look for tech news on surface. They see 32gb, they expect somewhere close to that.

 

[paulschapman]

Good luck running any programs from a secondary drive. When was the last time you ran Office from your CD drive on your laptop?

I use my sd drive for my media and that's it.



**Sent from my Windows Phone using Board Express**

Is n't that the whole point though. Data on the SD card and apps on the Surface itself. The Surface is a highly portable computer - it is not going to be overflowing with loads of on board memory.