Surface Pro: Is 19/83GB free space enough?

[coolqf]

I'm going to wait until July before making a decision. February is 4 months before we see haswell laptops and Microsoft has a history of releasing their first versions as beta. On paper, the pro looks great, but in practice.... Who knows.

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[Villain]

you get 19gb from 64gb model? that can't be legit, is it? awfully expensive hardware to only get 19gb's

 

[Deleted member 199301]

Disappointing. Even though the first thing I would do is add a 64GB MicroSD.

 

[bauerbach]

so the real question.... Is there any way to swap the SSD? Id be happy to get the 64gig and procure my own 256 or even 512gb... unless the drive is soldered in.

 

[csd_images]

64Gb SSD would be anaemic for those using it seriously with a lot of applications/data. You'll be micro-managing your files and transferring via the USB/WiFi. This is a case where a NAS could come in handy. For those using professional apps like Office/Creative Suite then you'll probably be better off getting the 128Gb version. It's early days but it's likely the SSD will be standard modules soldered to the mainboard just like the Surface RT. See step 14 here:

Microsoft Surface Teardown - Page 2 - iFixit

 

[narv]

19 sounds kind of low.. I know with the 32 GB RT you get 16 essentially because the recovery partition plus the OS... I guess assuming the OS is 20 GB... and then the recovery partition is a full install so another 20 GB... you're down to 24 GB... then perhaps some other stuff... If that is the case im really disappointed that they don't include the partition in a USB or something.. Or give people instructions on how to do it.. they wont know to go looking.. they'll think "oh... I get ripped off!"

 

[VagrantWade]

Do we actually know for a fact that the recovery partition and installed software will be the same on the 64gb as the 128gb? Because I doubt it. So the 19gb estimation is probably off.

 

[havox22]

I'm not worried about personal files. SD slot and SkyDrive Will be fine for that. But what about when I install Adobe Design suite, AutoCAD, etc.?

CS6 is taking up about 10.5 GBs on my PC now. 19 GB definitely will not be enough, I guess I will getting the 128GB model & grab a 1TB portable hard drive.

 

[thatguyhugs]

Why carry all of your files with you all of the time? I have a 3 TB wireless hard drive that I can access from ANYWHERE in the world. So my movies, files, photos, etc. are on a personal cloud that comes straight from my house. My main concern for the 83 free GB would be the programs but after Photoshop and some misc. programs, everything else is relatively small.

 

[dsp4]

Surface RT uses eMMC flash memory while Pro will have a "full-blown" SSD, so there's still hope the Pro uses an mSATA solution like the Samsung Series 7 did. It'll probably be a pain to disassemble though.

 

[TK2011]

Turning off hibernation and virtual memory (aka swap, paging) will free up many GBs. (Two huge hidden files are in c:\ folder.) But disabling swap space is probably not recommended unless you have lots of physical memory.

My W8 Pro tablet has almost 20GB free space on 32GB disk.

 

[matrixcruiser]

64GB model just 19GB free?

I call a W500 my own. 32GB of storage in total. Win8 Pro does need something like 10-12GB. I installed the Beta of Office and many many games. Games like GTA-SA were stored on the sd-card. The appstore apps of cause on the ssd. I still had something like 4GB left.

Later i had to reinstall my windows because of a faulty driver. Sadly the windows.old directory still sits on my ssd needing 12gb. Right know, having 2 times windows, some games, many apps and mostly stuff from the university(but no office).... 1GB left. (going to free up some right now!)

If you think about the surface pro having minimum the double amount of space... is think 64GB should be fine if you use: Office and one bigger program like Adobe or Solidworks. You should end up with enough space for program files or pictures.

 

[MrJustastic]

It seems as though most people in this thread so far are living in the higher end of PC demands. There are two versions out and clearly the 64GB version is not for you and complaining about it isn't really reasonable. If you have higher demands on computers you will always be living in the higher end of hardware. I personally feel I would be much happier with a 256GB drive too..

The question for the validity of the 64GB option is it it enough for my parents. In this case I would say it is. They aren't towing around masses of pictures, but do store some for showing friends. They don't have music and so far TuneIn radio as an app has been enough to cover that whole area. To be honest The Surface Pro isn't for them as the RT is more than enough for what they do do.

But my mother in law is really keen on the Pro and on being able to use the pen for annotating documents as she is in the education sector. The RT doesn't suit here and she needs to run some legacy apps because software in her profession is lagging so much. But she is more than comfortable with only 19GB spare..

Everything has its place, its just if you can validate it enough to say it deserves being a staple offering....

 

[Fleon]

Actually, they didn't say that about the 64GB version, did they? I believe they only gave numbers for the 128GB. I have found, based on the two different Samsung tablets I have, that Windows 8 reserves different amounts of space for recovery, file history, etc depending on how large the disk is. I expect you will find about 20ish GB of space used on the lower end Surface.

My current machine is a Samsung tablet with 128GB, so I assume the Surface Pro 128GB will be very similar, and there is a very easy trick to recover about 17GB of space- just use the built in tool to move the recovery media from the SDD to a USB flash drive. I don't have any idea why, but the recovery partition on mine was huge, and I was happy to get that space back.


Back to your original question, however, yes, MS really should have a 256GB version.

 

[Deleted member 199301]

Surface RT uses eMMC flash memory while Pro will have a "full-blown" SSD, so there's still hope the Pro uses an mSATA solution like the Samsung Series 7 did. It'll probably be a pain to disassemble though.

I'm be shocked if that didn't void the warranty.

 

[Major]

Sounds like people will have to buy a SD card and a USB drive to expand storage by 64GB and 15-20GB, respectively. MS should at least throw in the USB drive as a good will gesture.

 

[Raduc78]

Will the surface be SDXC compatible, and if so, can I use a 128gb SD card?

 

[Vallos]

Engadget is now reporting they have official word from Microsoft:

128GB Surface Pro ships with 83GB free, 64GB has only 23GB

 

[justinm001]

That must be worst case. I have 64gb ssds in my windows 8 PC and laptop. Also one running 2012 server. There's enough space for anything. It should be about 32gb used and free after install. But with shadow copies and everything else and being used for a few months the 19gb sounds right on. I can see why Microsoft is saying that, they do not want people to see 64gb and be upset because the os uses 30gb
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[Raduc78]

There it is, the reply to my question. It is SDXC but only up to 64gb, which is a shame since there's 128gb cards now and that would've alleviated the storage situation. Oh well... :unhappy: