Fusion drive tear down...

[Swiftylee1972]

Here is an interesting one....

The fusion drive is 2 drives...

A 1tb 5400rpm hitachi drive linked to a 128gb ssd....

Could I replace the 1tb with a 750gb seagate xt hybrid and link it back up with the 128gb apple drive...

Bet this would go like f...

 

[opinio]

You may have missed my edit in the other thread but I added the following:

See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ew,3270-3.html

That review suggests the apple OEM 1TB is faster than the seagate momentous xt (in certain benchmarking environments). New tech versus old I guess.

Personally I would keep your stock Apple fusion. You run the chance of damage to the Mini if you pull it apart. This chance increases if you have never done the teardown before too. Having said that the job is still doable.

 

[Swiftylee1972]

Have taken one apart before not too bad to be fair

Just wondered if it is worth doing or just rip he whole lot out ...

I have two new xt 750 drives plus a extra drive kit for a Mac mini plus 16 gb ram sat here doing nothing..

 

[marzer]

Here is an interesting one....

The fusion drive is 2 drives...

A 1tb 5400rpm hitachi drive linked to a 128gb ssd....

Sorry to be the smart@$$ but someone's gotta do it...this is older news than the opening of Capone's vault

Could I replace the 1tb with a 750gb seagate xt hybrid and link it back up with the 128gb apple drive...

Bet this would go like f...

Now for the constructive input: due to the acceleration the SSD provides for the mechanical HD portion of the Fusion drive, any speed diffs between the stock 1TB and the XT hybrid would be virtually undetectable.

On the other hand, you might consider experimenting. Break the FD and remove the stock SSD and HD. Load both XT hybrids into the mini. Use a TB or USB 3 enclosure to create a high-speed external boot drive with the 128GB SSD. Then create a RAID0 drive using the two hybrids for very fast 1.5TB data storage.

And I'm not sure of the advanced features of Core Storage, but perhaps it may even permit a "fusion" of the SSD and hybrid RAID drive?

 

[benwiggy]

due to the acceleration the SSD provides for the mechanical HD portion of the Fusion drive, any speed diffs between the stock 1TB and the XT hybrid would be virtually undetectable.

Quoted for truth.

There's no point in swapping in a smaller drive to the Fusion setup. You are not going to see any speed difference, and you will just lose storage space.

The fact that the Fusion Drive is two separate devices is widely known, and has been since it was introduced.

 

[paulrbeers]

Here is an interesting one....

The fusion drive is 2 drives...

A 1tb 5400rpm hitachi drive linked to a 128gb ssd....

Could I replace the 1tb with a 750gb seagate xt hybrid and link it back up with the 128gb apple drive...

Bet this would go like f...

The 8GB of SSD Cache is used for items that are accessed often (like OS files, documents you edit daily, web cache, etc.). These are the same files that OSX will leave on the SSD portion of the Fusion drive. The hard drive only gets items such as MP3's, Movies, Applications you rarely access, etc. etc. Since you aren't accessing these files often, your Seagate Hybrid drive won't have any way of determining are the most accessed files thus rendering SSD Cache almost pointless.

I'm also wondering how the SSD in the Seagate drive determines what should be cached. Does it do it at the Block level or at the file level? Since Fusion works at the Block level, what if the SSD Cache works at the file level? The Hybrid drive may not even see full files and thus completely rendering the SSD Cache useless.

The above is the same reason you don't see Hybrid drives in External hard drives. What would be the point? You don't access the External drive like you do the internal. You use external hard drives for files you do not access often.

Most likely if you even attempted this, you would find little (and most likely no) benefit from this setup other than depriving yourself of 250GB worth of storage since you went from 1TB to 750GB.

Just my .02 worth.

Edit: I'm also going to add that I have a Seagate Momentus XT drive. Frankly I am not impressed by it. It's a stop gap for those who can't afford the relatively high expense of large SSD's (i.e. 512GB) but need that kind of storage. Frankly if you have laptop, get a 120GB SSD and rip out the optical and put a regular 2.5" drive in there. Until Hybrid drives get at least 64GB worth of SSD cache, I see no point.

 

[gnasher729]

Here is an interesting one....

The fusion drive is 2 drives...

A 1tb 5400rpm hitachi drive linked to a 128gb ssd....

Could I replace the 1tb with a 750gb seagate xt hybrid and link it back up with the 128gb apple drive...

Bet this would go like f...

That would be absolutely pointless.

The 128 GB that are most used are on the Fusion drive.

The next 4 or 8 GB may end up in the hybrid's cache. But that data is obviously not used much, otherwise it would be on the Fusion drive. So the money you pay for "hybrid" is wasted.

 

[t0mat0]

Is there any info on what the SSD is?
I'm wondering whether Apple might do a HDD + Optane or
SSD + Optane version when Optane becomes available and curious what type of SSD they use currently speed wise.