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SSD Vs Fusion Drive iMac
- Thread starter tinaberezino
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I just unjoined my 2TB Fusion Drive. Installed El Capitan on the 128GB SSD and will install all my media files to the 2TB 7200 RPM Seagate. We'll see how it works out
Could any of you guys tell me what is the fastest external SSD I could hook up to this late 2015 iMac, preferably 1TB or greater and how would the speed compare with the 2TB 7200 RPM drive in the iMac?
I think you would need to get a thunderbolt drive for the best thought put, but there a not a lot of choices with thunderbolt drives, unless you want a raid setup.
Not even a comparison.
You are comparing a spinning disk and an SSD.
There is no comparison.
Don't think it would matter, an HDD can never compare to an SSD in terms of speed, under any circumstances.
It is never close.
It will be close if the external drive is a NAS connected to the computer via ethernet, or a DAS using a USB port that is not USB 3.
There are cases where it doesn't make sense to invest in a SSD for external drives
That's fine. SSDs are faster than HDDs. You can't deny it.It will be close if the external drive is a NAS connected to the computer via ethernet, or a DAS using a USB port that is not USB 3.
There are cases where it doesn't make sense to invest in a SSD for external drives
To the member asking this question, in nearly all cases, and likely cases, the fact remains.
imac09 wrote above:
"I just unjoined my 2TB Fusion Drive. Installed El Capitan on the 128GB SSD and will install all my media files to the 2TB 7200 RPM Seagate"
Just wondering...
Could you run the BlackMagic speed test on the (now standalone) SSD, and let us know what kind of speeds it gives you?
"I just unjoined my 2TB Fusion Drive. Installed El Capitan on the 128GB SSD and will install all my media files to the 2TB 7200 RPM Seagate"
Just wondering...
Could you run the BlackMagic speed test on the (now standalone) SSD, and let us know what kind of speeds it gives you?
A little late for that as I refused the drives last night, If I do it again, I'll be happy to...
He wanted to know *which* external SSD was the fastest (which nobody has yet answered) and how that compared to a 2TB Fusion Drive. He did not state any money restrictions, nor interface type, nor whether he wanted fastest benchmark performance or just very good real world performance.
Obviously the fastest would be a high-performance Thunderbolt SSD, possibly in RAID-0. The Sonnet Thunderbolt 512GB SSD uses PCIE and is one of the fastest single drives. He wanted 1TB+, so he'd need two or more of these:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1143173-REG/sonnet_fus_tb2_512gb_fusion_solid_state_drive.html
The OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini with the right SSDs is very fast: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4-mini
In this test the Samsung 850 Pro SSD three-drive RAID-0 was very fast: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6906/samsung-850-pro-256gb-three-drive-ssd-raid-report/index3.html
The interface type is very important because external SSD via USB 3.0 will not be nearly as fast. Also he didn't state the workflow or application. Obviously a Thunderbolt SSD will be faster than a 2TB Fusion Drive, and will produce better benchmark numbers. Whether this makes a major difference in his actual workflow depends on the specifics. I have done many performance tests with FCPX between my 2015 iMac 27 with 1TB SSD vs a 2013 iMac 27 with 3TB Fusion Drive, and there are often few differences attributable to I/O.
Here is my Transcend 240GB Thunderbolt drive. Used it as a boot drive on my 2011 iMac before upgrading to a Retina iMac. Worked like a charm.
FYI, I get the same speed from this drive using Thunderbolt or using USB 3.0 so, that seems to be the limitation of the drive itself.
I have a 256GB SSD on one Retina iMac and a 2TB Fusion Drive on the other and I don't notice any real difference. Of course you might use it in a way that does, but not been my experience.
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The only time you experience a difference is when the Fusion drive is still learning your habits, that means some of your frequently used items are not on the SSD.
Once everything is finally on the SSD, the difference in performance is pretty hard to notice.
aevan and joema2, thanks a lot for your constructive and clever posts in that topic!
And off course everybody dream about an affordable 3TB SSD, but it doesn't exist today. And for the price of my 3TB FD, 256GB SSD + fast external storage of 3TB doesn't exist...
I can't afford pofessionnal fast storage, and I don't wan't a slow external drive for my datas... So in my case, the 3TB FD was the way to go. And I'm very happy with it so far
Now that a year+ has gone by, I want to ask: are you still happy with it?
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I'm glad you mentioned the PCIE aspect of things, because my question has to do with an older iMac (pre-PCIE) that can only use 3G SSD drives, so I'm not sure if it's worth upgrading from the HDD, or whether to go Fusion.
Anybody have an opinion about that?
Cool. The OP asked the SSD v. Fusion question then never posted in the tread again. S/He should be pleased. We are easily duped.
I have had several Macs with seagate drives and a Mac Mini i7 16gb RAM with Fusion Drive. I bought the Mac mini as soon as it was announced and used it intensely for 4 years. Its fulfilled all my expectations and pushed it far beyond its intended use for Graphics and video.
I have a late 2014 macbook with 512 SD which is slower so My opinion is that the Fusion Drive has proved its worth and I will get an iMac with Fusion drive early next year.
I have a 2008 15" MBP, had the regular hard drive, changed it to a Crucial SSD about 3 years ago. Speed improvements were measurable and noticeable in real life use. Ran several tests before swapping drives, all the same exact conditions, same amount of files and space used on both drives, and each test at least 3 times:
1- My boot time was around 1:45 with the HD, upped the RAM to 8 gb and dropped to 1:30, went down to 35 seconds with the SSD addition. (Late 2013 27" iMac fully loaded with Fusion drive boots in 35 seconds too).
2- 2 RAW files of a 16 mega pixel camera took 1:45 to transfer from Lightroom to Photoshop, with SSD dropped down to 45 seconds. (Late 2013 iMac does it in 15 seconds).
3- Boot time to the time I can use Lightroom smoothy was 3:50, with SSD around 1:15.
4- Saving an edited photo in Photoshop took about 7 seconds, with SSD about 2 seconds.
5- Closing and backing up Lightroom took around 4 minutes, dropped to around 2 minutes.
6- The laptop runs more reliably and just snappier. Before SSD, when exporting 20 large images out of Lightroom, I couldn't get anything else done until the transfer was complete, not even open up of a browser. With SSD, I can actually open a browser and perform other lightly loaded tasks during the transfer.
7- Apple said 4 gb or RAM is the max on the laptop, mixed reviews said it can take 8 gb and some said it can't. Well, I spoke with Crucial and they said it will.....so that's when I put the 8 gb in it and sure enough, after resetting the NVRAM it worked.
I worked on the laptop daily until the summer of 2015, when I got the 2013 iMac. Still, I pull out the laptop for checking e-mails, and other daily stuff. The SSD was certainly worth it. Going to replace the Fusion on this iMac to an SSD as well in a week or so, will post results. The real life tests of what we do has more value to me than running an app that does a general test.
Hope this helps,
Amir
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Thanks for the useful discussion! I'm jonesing to replace my seven year old iMac, and storage is the big question that I have. I think this discussion has settled it for me.
A couple of observations:
It's mid-2107, and SSD is still substantially more expensive in an iMac than Fusion. I think we were all thinking that SSD would be much cheaper by now, at least Apple's offerings would be.
I work for a Fortune 100 data center / cloud computer manufacturer. For several years I've heard the planners predict the demise of HDD. It's still around for one very good reason: customers continue to order it.
I'm not aware that we sell any products that are pure SSD. SSD in front of HDD still makes a lot of sense both performance wise and price wise. And SSD in front of HDD in front of tape is still a thing.
A couple of observations:
It's mid-2107, and SSD is still substantially more expensive in an iMac than Fusion. I think we were all thinking that SSD would be much cheaper by now, at least Apple's offerings would be.
I work for a Fortune 100 data center / cloud computer manufacturer. For several years I've heard the planners predict the demise of HDD. It's still around for one very good reason: customers continue to order it.
I'm not aware that we sell any products that are pure SSD. SSD in front of HDD still makes a lot of sense both performance wise and price wise. And SSD in front of HDD in front of tape is still a thing.
You can put a thunderbolt 3 40gbit port thing on the iMac, but realise the sata3 is still 6gbit on the other end, so even if you buy a 209340234 write speed thing, if the bottle neck is sata3, that's the max you will get regardless.
Most normal SSD drives are sata3 and write/read around 500mb/s from what i can tell.
And most m.2 1000+ on read/write for external, still seem to be going through an adapter from m.2 to sata3, and max out at 6gbit because of it.
My SSD for example is 250/500 write/read and on usb3 on new imac i get 265 write and 400 read. on a usb3->sata3 adapter cable. It's easy, simple connect, and works. and reaching max speeds for that drive. Moving it to usb-c probably only changes that 400 to closer to 500 - but will max out at 6gbit anyway.
Unless there's a 10gbit usb-c adapter cable that goes directly into m.2 (then instead of sata3 6gbit, it will be max 10gbit on usb-c)
We'd have to figure out what's affordable vs available and where the bottleneck is
The only fast fast external one i found is the combo setup of that 2tb ssd from lacie that's proper on both sides, and gets those 1500 to 2000 write/read on usb-c (thunderbolt3) but then the price goes from around 250 to 500, to over 2000 euro ..