Fusion or SSD?

[majaca]

Need to replace late 2012 iMac (display &/or graphics card likely toast) and it has a 3TB Fusion drive.
Have had no issues w/it, but now UNDECIDED on this last decision -

Should I build my new iMac w/another 3TB fusion or 2TB SSD ($ is not a factor)? Pls give me some reasons for your advice, the more I understand, the more it will help me decide.

Important factors to me:

reliability (my family pics are precious, my most concern!)
longevity

speed is nice, but my fusion was fine in that area.

I have read that fusions (HDD) get 'hot' and SSD's don't. Heat = BAD.
I'd like my next iMac to last ~7yrs+ like the one I'm replacing did!

THX!

PS I need to order this thing asap as ship time is so far out (July)! Also, I've decided against waiting for WWDC.

 

[velocityg4]

In a recent study of 1.8 million SSD in a data center. Depending on the specific model of SSD. Failure rates were between 0.07% and 1.2% annually. The average being 0.22%. This also factors in much older 50+nm SSD. Which have nowhere near the endurance of modern SSD.

SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises

Solid state drives (SSDs) have remade the storage industry in the last decade. They're costly, fast, and power efficient, but just how reliable are they? A new study of almost 1.4 million SSDs offers some surprising answers.

www.zdnet.com

HDD failure rates vary too. Backblaze regularly releases data on this from their data centers. Depending on the quarter these range overall from 1.07% to 2.25% annually. Individual drives models can range from around 0.25% to 3.25%. There is some fluctuation there from anomalous models of 0% to 35%. Likely from a low sample size. Overall, you're looking at four to nine times higher reliability for SSD.

Hard Drive Test Data

Hard Drive test data from the Backblaze data center. Backblaze is affordable, easy-to-use cloud storage.

www.backblaze.com

Also, if your family pictures are precious. Get a backup. For something that important. I'd have a backup HDD. Plus I'd pay Backblaze $50 a year for an off site backup over the internet. If you are paranoid about someone gaining access to them. Backblaze allows you to generate your own encryption key. Just don't lose that key. Because they will have no way to restore your data without it.

 

[glenthompson]

How much space are you currently using? Do you need 3tb of storage in the iMac? In that case the fusion can make sense if going for the larger SSD is too costly.

For reliability a good backup solution is the only answer. All hardware fails at some point, be it hardware problems, stupid user tricks, theft, or the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. I like to use a scenario approach to disaster recovery. Think of the various things that can happen to your data and figure out how you will recover in each scenario. In ten years of using Macs I have had to resort to my backups twice. Once due to a hardware failure and once for a botched OS upgrade.

 

[mj_]

If your family photos are precious you don't need a reliable storage drive. You need a solid backup strategy.

 

[Fishrrman]

IF money "is not a factor", get the SSD.
Nothing more need be said.

 

[Weaselboy]

Should I build my new iMac w/another 3TB fusion or 2TB SSD ($ is not a factor)?

Given money is not an issue, the decision is easy for me... SSD all the way.

As others mentioned, I would also make sure you have a robust backup strategy in place so you never lose those family photos. I backup locally to a hard drive using Time Machine hourly. Then once every few days to a SSD using Carnon Copy Cloner. And daily online using the app Arq backed up to BackBlaze B2 servers.

 

[Phil77354]

Given money is not an issue, the decision is easy for me... SSD all the way.

As others mentioned, I would also make sure you have a robust backup strategy in place so you never lose those family photos. I backup locally to a hard drive using Time Machine hourly. Then once every few days to a SSD using Carnon Copy Cloner. And daily online using the app Arq backed up to BackBlaze B2 servers.

Agree 100% I purchased my iMac (late 2014) with SSD for exactly this reason, and I always keep Time Machine active so that I'm backed up.

If I had photos or documents that were particularly precious, I would also keep a separate copy as @Weaselboy does.

 

[The Hammer]

IF money "is not a factor", get the SSD.
Nothing more need be said.

Amen to that.

 

[zorinlynx]

If you buy an SSD-only iMac, the only moving parts in the machine will be the fans. In a machine that you can't open up to service, you want to reduce the number of moving parts as much as possible to gain more reliability.

You can always buy an external drive to up your storage and connect it with USB 3.x or Thunderbolt if you need even more speed. On a desktop iMac this will always be a convenient option for you unlike with a Macbook where you will have to carry one more thing with you.

As a personal anecdote, back when we had hard-drive equipped iMacs at work, we had a several failures a year among a few dozen machines. It was always the hard drives. Since we moved to SSD-only we have only had one failure and it was because of physical damage. (university students, sigh)

 

[Michael Scrip]

I'll echo the other comments here.

Since money is no problem... it would be silly NOT to get an SSD in a new computer today.

If you'll be keeping this computer for 8 years like your old one... you'll be thankful you went SSD. I couldn't imagine spending $2,000+ on a computer that had any kind of spinning hard drive inside it.

As for your precious memories... you need backups regardless of whether the internal drive is an SSD or a spinning hard drive. Backup, backup, backup. Keep a local copy on an external hard drive and lock it in a safe. And keep another copy on some cloud service.

 

[majaca]

How much space are you currently using? Do you need 3tb of storage in the iMac? In that case the fusion can make sense if going for the larger SSD is too costly.

For reliability a good backup solution is the only answer. All hardware fails at some point, be it hardware problems, stupid user tricks, theft, or the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. I like to use a scenario approach to disaster recovery. Think of the various things that can happen to your data and figure out how you will recover in each scenario. In ten years of using Macs I have had to resort to my backups twice. Once due to a hardware failure and once for a botched OS upgrade.

I mentioned that $ wasn't a factor. My Q really wasn't about storage 'space', it was which one should I opt for...another fusion? or this time, try an SSD? I'm hearing fusions (HDD's) are less reliable as they create 'heat', and heat shortens the lifespan of the computer in general.

Thanks for your help.
[automerge]1590847421[/automerge]

Given money is not an issue, the decision is easy for me... SSD all the way.

As others mentioned, I would also make sure you have a robust backup strategy in place so you never lose those family photos. I backup locally to a hard drive using Time Machine hourly. Then once every few days to a SSD using Carnon Copy Cloner. And daily online using the app Arq backed up to BackBlaze B2 servers.

That's a lotta backup! think Phil Swift meme

(sry, bad joke, it's just what came to my mind immediately - I have 2 teens who show me memes 24/7)

 

[Roxy.music]

Given money is not an issue, the decision is easy for me... SSD all the way.

As others mentioned, I would also make sure you have a robust backup strategy in place so you never lose those family photos. I backup locally to a hard drive using Time Machine hourly. Then once every few days to a SSD using Carnon Copy Cloner. And daily online using the app Arq backed up to BackBlaze B2 servers.

Your well backed up there Weaselboy.

 

[Lankyman]

Unless you have at least 3 backups including one off site then your data is vulnerable. For the average user a FD is more than good enough. I have two machines with SSD but my main iMac is FD and I find this no better or worse than the SSD machines.

 

[Bmoreguy03]

100% SSD

 

[majaca]

So! Thanks for all the help!
I just placed my order😬:

27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display

Hardware:

• Accessory Kit
• 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
• Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
• 3.7GHz 6-core 9th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz
• 2TB SSD storage

 

[firedept]

Nice. Enjoy it!!

 

[Phil77354]

So! Thanks for all the help!
I just placed my order😬:

27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display

Hardware:

• Accessory Kit
• 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
• Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
• 3.7GHz 6-core 9th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz
• 2TB SSD storage

Very nice configuration. You may want to upgrade RAM at some point but it is very easy to do with the 27" iMac.

My 27" iMac was almost the same price back in Nov of 2014, same 16 GB RAM but only 500 GB SSD.

 

[Weaselboy]

Nice setup! Let us know how you like it.

 

[Spudlicious]

So! Thanks for all the help!
I just placed my order😬:

27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display

Hardware:

• Accessory Kit
• 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
• Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
• 3.7GHz 6-core 9th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz
• 2TB SSD storage

That will be a nice computer. As others have said, but it cannot be said too often; backup, backup, backup, have multiple copies of your irreplaceable files.