I'm very happy with my choice of the Fusion Drive

[Sal Collaziano]

I just wanted to stop by and mention how my new iMac is doing. The main thing I want to report on is the 3TB Fusion Drive. Most of my daily tasks are done with Adobe products like Dreamweaver CS5 and Photoshop CS5. Both are working fine on my new iMac.

I've also been doing a lot of moving pictures into "Photos". Outside of these things I'm using Postbox email and Google Chrome constantly - with Chrome having 20 tabs opened. The computer is fast. All the applications I use open within a second. For somebody like me, in my situation, the Fusion Drive is performing perfectly...

I'll talk about longevity of the drive at another time. My main ambition for posting this here is that I'm sure a lot of people are debating with themselves over whether or not they should spend the extra money on a solid state drive. If you have the spare money, buy it. It's a no brainer. If you don't, and you use your computer similarly to the way I do, you're not going to see the beachball...

 

[SecuritySteve]

It's been a while since I used a fusion drive, but I recall having fairly positive experiences using one when all I did was lightweight gaming / programming in college. I think they get a worse rap than they deserve here, but SSDs are coming down in price, and it's only a matter of time before platters are only used for extremely large storage, and then eventually not at all.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Well Sal, told you it would last past Tuesday week!

 

[Sal Collaziano]

It's been a while since I used a fusion drive, but I recall having fairly positive experiences using one when all I did was lightweight gaming / programming in college. I think they get a worse rap than they deserve here, but SSDs are coming down in price, and it's only a matter of time before platters are only used for extremely large storage, and then eventually not at all.

And this is why I posted about my experience. I have 128mb (corrected as per comment below) of flash storage and that's plenty for what I use the computer for. I feel too many people are being scared into either waiting on their purchase because they've been convinced the Fusion drive will be too slow - or into spending far more than they need for a good computer. I need space and I don't want external drives so it would have cost too much for me to get flash storage.

Well Sal, told you it would last past Tuesday week!

So far, so good!

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Your iMac actually has 128GB of Flash Storage.

 

[SaSaSushi]

I'm glad you're happy with your iMac and I hope it serves you well for as long as you own it.

Still, I don't recommend the Fusion Drive anymore.

Fusion Drives generally don't start slowing down until they fill up. I had a 128TB SSD component in the 1TB Fusion Drive of my previous Late 2013 iMac and this was my experience. As a result, I switched to booting from an external SSD in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

I ended up having the HDD in that machine fail twice, once in and the second time out of AppleCare in spite of the fact that I was using the Fusion Drive only for storage and not to boot from.

I went with the 512GB SSD for my current 2017 iMac and personally will never buy nor recommend another Mac with a spinning drive. I like to attach those externally where I can easily replace them when (not if) they fail.

 

[alien3dx]

I just wanted to stop by and mention how my new iMac is doing. The main thing I want to report on is the 3TB Fusion Drive. Most of my daily tasks are done with Adobe products like Dreamweaver CS5 and Photoshop CS5. Both are working fine on my new iMac.

I've also been doing a lot of moving pictures into "Photos". Outside of these things I'm using Postbox email and Google Chrome constantly - with Chrome having 20 tabs opened. The computer is fast. All the applications I use open within a second. For somebody like me, in my situation, the Fusion Drive is performing perfectly...

I'll talk about longevity of the drive at another time. My main ambition for posting this here is that I'm sure a lot of people are debating with themselves over whether or not they should spend the extra money on a solid state drive. If you have the spare money, buy it. It's a no brainer. If you don't, and you use your computer similarly to the way I do, you're not going to see the beachball...

As long you happy sir, about the debate of solid state drive. Some people required superb speed for their video editing writing.For me , when i add on external ssd.The only diff just loading speed but usually can counter with on with sleep mode. I only add external ssd for compiling speed testing only.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Your iMac actually has 128GB of Flash Storage.

Thank you. I updated my post. 128gb seems perfect for me...

I'm glad you're happy with your iMac and I hope it serves you well for as long as you own it.

Still, I don't recommend the Fusion Drive anymore.

Fusion Drives generally don't start slowing down until they fill up. I had a 128TB SSD component in the 1TB Fusion Drive of my previous Late 2013 iMac and this was my experience. As a result, I switched to booting from an external SSD in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

I ended up having the HDD in that machine fail twice, once in and the second time out of AppleCare in spite of the fact that I was using the Fusion Drive only for storage and not to boot from.

I went with the 512GB SSD for my current 2017 iMac and personally will never buy nor recommend another Mac with a spinning drive. I like to attach those externally where I can easily replace them when (not if) they fail.

I imagine I probably won't buy another computer with a spinning drive... You mentioned that as the drive fills up, it starts slowing down. Luckily for me, I typically stay at about 1TB of data on the drive - so I'll most likely always have around 2TB free. I think 1/3 full should be okay - but we'll see...

I'm sorry you've had such bad luck with spinning drives. I'm sure now that I say this - I will as well. But I've been using spinning hard drives since 1985 and I've never had one fail on me. My data is very important to me so I do keep backups and if anything ever goes wrong, I should be okay. I keep multiple backups...

As long you happy sir, about the debate of solid state drive. Some people required superb speed for their video editing writing.For me , when i add on external ssd.The only diff just loading speed but usually can counter with on with sleep mode. I only add external ssd for compiling speed testing only.

Right, I do very little video editing, very rarely. If I were doing more I'd have probably opted for a flash drive...