Fusion Drive vs SSD

[varian55zx]

I have a 1Tb/24Gb Fusion drive, and it's really fast.
It's hard to believe, but it works very well, and for 90% of my usages, I don't notice I also have a spinner in my iMac.
Most people that criticize the 1Tb/24Gb Fusion drive have never used one.

The 1 tb fusion is objectively not fast.

You want to know what is fast? 1 tb SSD. Mac Pro with an SSD.

That's fast.

The 2 tb fusion is not as fast as those, but it's waayy faster than the 1 tb.

Again, I'm only stating facts.

However, your anecdotal account is an interesting one. You seem to think its performance is adequate.

I am very happy for you that for your usage it has proven adequate.

But please do not try and steer someone away from the 512 SSD to the 1 tb fusion. You are possibly assisting in helping them make a $2000+ mistake.

 

[rbart]

1Tb SSD is of course really faster, but the 1Tb FD is fast enough for a lot of people.
Have you tried one ?
Have you used one for a while ?

The spinner only is really unusable and ugly, but the 1Tb FD is a very good solution for a lot of people.

 

[varian55zx]

1Tb SSD is of course really faster, but the 1Tb FD is fast enough for a lot of people.
Have you tried one ?
Have you used one for a while ?

The spinner only is really unusable and ugly, but the 1Tb FD is a very good solution for a lot of people.

I did use the spinner, I simply thought it was too slow.

I want as many people to be as happy with their machines as possible, so if a percentage of users is happy with their 1 tb fusion, well I am very happy about that.

 

[maflynn]

I have a 1Tb/24Gb Fusion drive, and it's really fast.

I'm sure its fast - up to a point, and that point is where the data resides, 24GB flash or the hard drive.

The 2TB Fusion drive I have is fast, but there are some things I notice that are slower. An for instance that once took a single bounce to start up, takes several, because I stopped using it for a while. Images that I'm working on are a bit slower to pull up, etc etc.

The idea of the fusion drive is to bridge the performance of the SSD with the cost per gigabyte of the hard drive. From an overall perspective it cannot compete with an SSD on performance alone

 

[varian55zx]

I'm sure its fast - up to a point, and that point is where the data resides, 24GB flash or the hard drive.

The 2TB Fusion drive I have is fast, but there are some things I notice that are slower. An for instance that once took a single bounce to start up, takes several, because I stopped using it for a while. Images that I'm working on are a bit slower to pull up, etc etc.

The idea of the fusion drive is to bridge the performance of the SSD with the cost per gigabyte of the hard drive. From an overall perspective it cannot compete with an SSD on performance alone

This is all completely true.

Again I am very happy that there are users who are coming out and saying that the 24gb is adequate for them, because I previously thought it may not be adequate for anyone.

So I am happy that it is working for some people.

The 2TB Fusion drive I have is fast, but there are some things I notice that are slower. An for instance that once took a single bounce to start up, takes several, because I stopped using it for a while. Images that I'm working on are a bit slower to pull up, etc etc.

This is how I gauge my Fusion Drive as well.

I'll gauge it off the number of bounces, SSDs are usually one, my fusion can take two sometimes, which is not so great, but it's way better than 10, and I also have 2 tb of storage.

So when you weigh it in that way the fusion drive is valid and is a good choice.

And I'm not using an external drive. That is a factor that is very hard to over look.

I love not having some external hard drive, which is probably prone to disconnecting, hanging out around my computer.

You will notice millisecond speed differences here and there, but it isn't like those don't come with other upsides too.

 

[circatee]

To make sure I understand correctly. You only have one internal drive, a 2TB Fusion, right?
How do you perform Time Machine backups, or are you using an alternative?

I asked the above, mainly since you stated that you don't have external drives.

This is all completely true.

Again I am very happy that there are users who are coming out and saying that the 24gb is adequate for them, because I previously thought it may not be adequate for anyone.

So I am happy that it is working for some people.


This is how I gauge my Fusion Drive as well.

I'll gauge it off the number of bounces, SSDs are usually one, my fusion can take two sometimes, which is not so great, but it's way better than 10, and I also have 2 tb of storage.

So when you weigh it in that way the fusion drive is valid and is a good choice.

And I'm not using an external drive. That is a factor that is very hard to over look.

I love not having some external hard drive, which is probably prone to disconnecting, hanging out around my computer.

You will notice millisecond speed differences here and there, but it isn't like those don't come with other upsides too.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

To make sure I understand correctly. You only have one internal drive, a 2TB Fusion, right?
How do you perform Time Machine backups, or are you using an alternative?

I asked the above, mainly since you stated that you don't have external drives.

Well a fusion is two drives with a software connection. But you can set time machine to keep Local backups or use a Partition to back up to.

 

[bent christian]

The current SSDs are BS fast.

Like... much faster than any 300 dollar aftermarket SSD you will get.

I'd get the biggest proper SSD you can, and if you want more storage plug in an external spinner for archive data or run it off a NAS over the network.

This is true, but I don't think most users will notice the difference between 500 MB/s and 1500 MB/s. Benchmarking is one thing. A user's perception and real-word use are another. PCiE SSDs are faster, but the applicable question is, will the user notice a difference for their particular use?

Yes. The user will easily notice. That particular difference is extremely obvious in all uses.

My experience has been different. Web browsers seem to open immediately with an SATA SSD and with a PCIe SSD. Applications like Photoshop open in just a few seconds on both SATA SSD and PCIe SSD. The difference in use between SATA and PCIe SSD is imperceptible to me, even though one is "three times faster".

 

[WichitaMacUser]

I purchased a 5k iMac (iMac17,1) with a 1TB HDD and within a month I was frustrated with speeds of the internal spinning HDD. I decided to upgrade my 2015 rMBP (MacBookPro12,1) from the stock 128gb SSD to an Apple 512gb SSD purchased off eBay that was pulled from the same year rMBP. I then took my 128gb SSD from the rMBP and installed it in my 5k iMac (I'm an ACMT tech for an AASP) which in theory makes it a custom fusion drive after I formatted the SSD and HDD to work together. After I did that my 5k iMac is super fast while still giving me the 1TB storage for large files (videos and pictures).


I know most people are unaware that you can do this but it is possible!!! If I had the money I would have bought the 5k iMac with 512gb or 1TB flash storage but my budget wouldn't allow for that so I went the 2nd best way with a custom fusion drive!

 

[circatee]

I understand that the Fusion drive is a fusion of two drives (SSD & SATA). However, I was under the impression when you buy a new iMac, and the OS is preloaded, etc. one can't then create a partition on that 'single' 1TB drive.

Am I mistaken?

Well a fusion is two drives with a software connection. But you can set time machine to keep Local backups or use a Partition to back up to.

 

[WichitaMacUser]

I understand that the Fusion drive is a fusion of two drives (SSD & SATA). However, I was under the impression when you buy a new iMac, and the OS is preloaded, etc. one can't then create a partition on that 'single' 1TB drive.

Am I mistaken?

You can through terminal. I used terminal to format and set up my custom fusion drive with my current setup of 128gb SSD and 1TB HDD in my 5k iMac.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

A fusion drive (and this may not apply to the 1TB found in the new iMac) is separate SSD and a normal HDD both separately connected and fused using software in the OS.
Indeed any two drives installed in an iMac can be turned into a fusion, so you could take your brand new iMac rip it open and replace the HDD with a SATA SSD like a Samsung Evo 1tb and reinstate fusion in the OS and have double SSD fusion drive if you want now that will be a fast solution. As I understand it fusion drives limit you to one partition on the combined space and if you use that for boot camp it obviously precludes other uses.

Edit, the SSD in the one TB is apparently a PCIe connected SSD with only 24gb of storage, this really was terrible penny pinching.

 

[hfg]

I understand that the Fusion drive is a fusion of two drives (SSD & SATA). However, I was under the impression when you buy a new iMac, and the OS is preloaded, etc. one can't then create a partition on that 'single' 1TB drive.

Am I mistaken?

You can create one partition on a Fusion drive using Apple tools. Using BootCamp Assistant, you can create a single additional partition which will reside on the hard disk and will not be part of the Fusion SSD assisted system (i.e. no SSD speedup for that partition). You can also remove that partition and revert back to a single large Fusion drive using the same tool. In both cases, your data will be preserved, although I would still recommend a full backup before you start.

Using Terminal commands, you can undo the Fusion join and pretty much do whatever you want. However this will destroy all data on your drive and you will need to restore from a backup.

 

[circatee]

I've just bought the 4TB Samsung external drive. That will be my backup drive, and I'll probably partition it, to thus have a clone on one partition...

 

[varian55zx]

My experience has been different. Web browsers seem to open immediately with an SATA SSD and with a PCIe SSD. Applications like Photoshop open in just a few seconds on both SATA SSD and PCIe SSD. The difference in use between SATA and PCIe SSD is imperceptible to me, even though one is "three times faster".

But let me just explain something.

You could say, the two web browsers open "immediately".

Or you could say one opens "immediately", and the other opens "a millisecond or two slower".

You could say oh, Photoshop opens on both "in seconds", or you could say, it opens in "less than two" on one, and "just over two" on the other.

And just look at other areas like spotlight, opening your application folder, clicking something in system preferences, and literally everything else.

In all those areas, you're saving fractions of seconds here and there.

It is a big difference for some people (like me) that can notice.

We're talking about a lightning fast experience.

I bet you would notice too if you cared to.

 

[throAU]

My experience has been different. Web browsers seem to open immediately with an SATA SSD and with a PCIe SSD. Applications like Photoshop open in just a few seconds on both SATA SSD and PCIe SSD. The difference in use between SATA and PCIe SSD is imperceptible to me, even though one is "three times faster".

Well yeah, application opening is one thing. But if you're actually doing stuff like shuffling data around, working with large data sets, etc. the difference is noticeable. Working with VMs, my 13" retina is night and day faster than my Surface Pro 4....

Both have 8 GB of RAM, neither is maxing CPU doing the stuff they are doing.

The big difference is that the Surface's SSD struggles to get 350 MB/sec. My 13" retina gets over 1400MB/sec while running file vault...

 

[maflynn]

I understand that the Fusion drive is a fusion of two drives (SSD & SATA).

Am I mistaken?

Yes, its two phyiscal drives joined together sort of like a RAID setup, but what's different is that while these are logically joined the operating system also manages where the data is placed. Often accessed data blocks are placed on the fast SSD, and lessor access data blocks are on the slower hard drive.

However, I was under the impression when you buy a new iMac, and the OS is preloaded, etc. one can't then create a partition on that 'single' 1TB drive.

You can create a boot camp partition, but AFAIK that's about it. You can split the fusion up, and then create as many partitions as you wish but then you have either a too small SSD (24GB for 1TB drives) or a 128GB SSD that might be a bit constrained.

 

[grahamperrin]

Some reports say running a NAS on an iMac, doesn't work well. Unless you also have an AirPort, etc.

No problems here with FreeNAS for Time Machine backups to ZFS-based storage, Mavericks and multiple non-Apple routers.

… 24GB flash drive, older models used 128GB of flash for the Fusion …

Interesting, thanks, I wasn't aware of that downgrade in specs.

http://web.archive.org/web/20151120...op/buy-mac/imac?product=MK472LL/A&step=config "… The 1TB Fusion Drive pairs a 1TB hard drive with 24GB of fast flash — enough to store important OS X files and applications to ensure fast startup, near instant wake from sleep and quick application launching, with room left over for your most frequently used files and apps. The 2TB and 3TB Fusion Drives pair a larger hard drive with 128GB of fast flash storage, providing even more space for your most frequently used files. For the best performance, iMac systems with 32GB of memory should be configured with a 2TB or larger Fusion Drive or all flash storage. …"

 

[cynics]

More on topic, if I was the OP I'd stick with SSD's since that is all your used too.

However we would need to know exactly what you are using your computer for before giving advice on what you need to buy. For example if all you do is store media than the Fusion makes much more sense. With media the bitrate is capped relatively low, space becomes much more valuable than speed.

 

[maflynn]

One advantage of the SSD over the flash drive is Bootcamp. I'm running windows 10 on the spinning drive, because that's my only option with bootcamp. Something to consider in the long run.

SSDs are better if the storage and budget are workable. For me, they were not (I have in excess of 600GB of data, and the 1TB SSD is outrageously priced)

 

[bent christian]

Well yeah, application opening is one thing. But if you're actually doing stuff like shuffling data around, working with large data sets, etc. the difference is noticeable. Working with VMs, my 13" retina is night and day faster than my Surface Pro 4....

Both have 8 GB of RAM, neither is maxing CPU doing the stuff they are doing.

The big difference is that the Surface's SSD struggles to get 350 MB/sec. My 13" retina gets over 1400MB/sec while running file vault...

350 MB/sec is not 500 MB/sec. 350 MB/sec is close to half of what SATA III is capable of. That is not a fair comparison.

 

[hfg]

One advantage of the SSD over the flash drive is Bootcamp. I'm running windows 10 on the spinning drive, because that's my only option with bootcamp. Something to consider in the long run.

SSDs are better if the storage and budget are workable. For me, they were not (I have in excess of 600GB of data, and the 1TB SSD is outrageously priced)

You might consider moving your Windows installation over to an external portable bus powered Thunderbolt SSD and velcro mounting it to the back of the iMac stand. Then you could restore the full internal disk back to Fusion, or continue to use your existing Windows partition for Windows storage of games, etc.

Some here will recommend a USB 3.0 drive for this, but I have not had a good experience getting Windows to run externally on other than Thunderbolt drives.

 

[throAU]

350 MB/sec is not 500 MB/sec. 350 MB/sec is close to half of what SATA III is capable of. That is not a fair comparison.

500 isn't 1400 either.

 

[bent christian]

500 isn't 1400 either.

It is fast enough that most users won't notice.

 

[throAU]

It is fast enough that most users won't notice.

And that was entirely not my point.

My original point is that you can't purchase a SATA SSD and class it as equal value to a PCIe SSD.

And depending on what you're doing, you will notice.

I have machines with various SSDs ranging in speed from 300 to 1500 MB/Sec and if you actually push the machine the difference is night and day.