Resolved Suggestions:Fusion Drive For Media?

[UncleSchnitty]

I just need some opinions here. I have a spare 120 SSD and I dont know what I should use it for. I was thinking a fusion drive for my media drive but I dont know if that would help at all because none of the files are huge and none of the are accessed all the time. Any suggestions or insight?

 

[hfg]

If you ever have a need to boot Windows, put it on that spare SSD...

If you have an application that can use a "scratch disk", use that SSD...

If you need more space on your main SSD, concatenate them for a larger single logical drive...

If you have 2 of them, RAID-0 them for twice the space and twice the speed in OS X...

Sell it...

 

[UncleSchnitty]

If you ever have a need to boot Windows, put it on that spare SSD...

If you have an application that can use a "scratch disk", use that SSD...

If you need more space on your main SSD, concatenate them for a larger single logical drive...

If you have 2 of them, RAID-0 them for twice the space and twice the speed in OS X...

Sell it...

I do boot windows for gaming and I thought about using that as the os drive but Im not as familiar with how to keep just the OS and essential files segregated on windows especially 8.1. Its sad how useless I have become on windows.

I have a samsung 840 evo 250gb as my mac os drive and this is a kingston 120 so Im really iffy about two different solid states linked raid or otherwise.

hah not selling it, ill definitely find something to do with it. You can never have too much fast storage.

 

[hfg]

I do boot windows for gaming and I thought about using that as the os drive but Im not as familiar with how to keep just the OS and essential files segregated on windows especially 8.1. Its sad how useless I have become on windows.

I have a samsung 840 evo 250gb as my mac os drive and this is a kingston 120 so Im really iffy about two different solid states linked raid or otherwise.

hah not selling it, ill definitely find something to do with it. You can never have too much fast storage.

Many of us use a separate SSD for Windows on our Mac Pro machines. It is a straight-forward Windows installation to the separate drive, then add the Apple hardware drivers (BootCamp download) just like for any PC motherboard. I stuck mine up in the spare optical drive bay on the second SATA port available there, but you can put it on a sled or even on a PCIe card for SATA III performance if your SSD supports that.

That's what I would do with it!

-howard

 

[UncleSchnitty]

Many of us use a separate SSD for Windows on our Mac Pro machines. It is a straight-forward Windows installation to the separate drive, then add the Apple hardware drivers (BootCamp download) just like for any PC motherboard. I stuck mine up in the spare optical drive bay on the second SATA port available there, but you can put it on a sled or even on a PCIe card for SATA III performance if your SSD supports that.

That's what I would do with it!

-howard

Sorry I meant I have a HDD in my pro that I put windows 8.1 on so Im familiar with how to get windows on there. My issue is with Mac I am very proficient in knowing how to separate what I want on the system drive(ssd) and what can go on a secondary (HDD). With windows 8.1 I am not really familiar enough to sort it all out. Ill have to do some research with windows to get it figured out.

On my original post I brought up my media drive fusioned with my "media" drive? Do you know if Im right that that wont have any real benefits from doing that?

 

[ybz90]

If it's for media storage, I wouldn't bother making a fusion drive. Fusion drive is just the marketing term for the software layer Apple uses to combine the two physical drives into a pooled storage. Basically, the SSD fills up until it's full and then the rest "spills over" on to the HDD. Based on access of certain files, that's what ends up on the SSD.

If you're using it for media storage though, and are considering a fusion drive, the implication is that you have more media than would fit on the SSD. In this case, the vast majority of it won't be on the SSD and therefore won't benefit from the speed boost. While there might be a subset of media files you access more frequently, in general, you're probably going to pull files all over the place, so I would just put it all on the HD and forget this whole fusion drive business altogether.

 

[haravikk]

If you're using it for media storage though, and are considering a fusion drive, the implication is that you have more media than would fit on the SSD. In this case, the vast majority of it won't be on the SSD and therefore won't benefit from the speed boost. While there might be a subset of media files you access more frequently, in general, you're probably going to pull files all over the place, so I would just put it all on the HD and forget this whole fusion drive business altogether.

While you definitely won't get all media onto the SSD, I'm not sure that's a reason to just abandon the idea, as it will still accelerate some of your usage, it really depends on what this media volume would be comprised of exactly, e.g - does media include music that you listen to regularly?

I'm currently using a 64gb Crucial V4 for transporting files about; okay so it's not quite as compact a USB stick, but it was a lot cheaper than most high capacity USB sticks, plus it has much better performance for just copying files onto it and off it again, and at the same of an SSD it's not exactly a burden to carry, especially since I have a 2.5" drive dock that adds very little extra to the size, only the cable is a nuisance but I don't need that if I know my destination has a compatible one (since SSDs don't need dual USB to bus power them).

 

[UncleSchnitty]

If it's for media storage, I wouldn't bother making a fusion drive. Fusion drive is just the marketing term for the software layer Apple uses to combine the two physical drives into a pooled storage. Basically, the SSD fills up until it's full and then the rest "spills over" on to the HDD. Based on access of certain files, that's what ends up on the SSD.

If you're using it for media storage though, and are considering a fusion drive, the implication is that you have more media than would fit on the SSD. In this case, the vast majority of it won't be on the SSD and therefore won't benefit from the speed boost. While there might be a subset of media files you access more frequently, in general, you're probably going to pull files all over the place, so I would just put it all on the HD and forget this whole fusion drive business altogether.

Thank you, thats pretty much what I figured and that confirms it. I think my best option is to use it for a windows boot drive. Since I mainly use my pc side of the computer for gaming its off to find some save files! And a place to mount/power it once my solo x2 gets here.
Thanks for the help guys. I really appreciate it.

 

[MattDSLR]

Thank you, thats pretty much what I figured and that confirms it. I think my best option is to use it for a windows boot drive. Since I mainly use my pc side of the computer for gaming its off to find some save files! And a place to mount/power it once my solo x2 gets here.
Thanks for the help guys. I really appreciate it.

Thank you
Great info here

 

[Yebubbleman]

I just need some opinions here. I have a spare 120 SSD and I dont know what I should use it for. I was thinking a fusion drive for my media drive but I dont know if that would help at all because none of the files are huge and none of the are accessed all the time. Any suggestions or insight?

A Fusion Drive sounds great on paper, but is seriously annoying in practice. The only ways in which that is not true is if you configure either a Mac mini or an iMac with one and you don't find yourself doing a whole lot of reformatting/repartitioning of your disk as that's what makes it irritating. DIY Fusion drives for the purpose of making a boot drive are fun, but again, irritating unless you are (a) using it as your boot drive and (b) not doing a whole lot else in the way of weird partitioning with your drive.

 

[UncleSchnitty]

Yeah I decided to just use it as my windows boot drive and then use my old windows HDD for programs games and media. Everything else seemed like a hassle especially since I change my mind so often, who knows maybe Ubuntu will go on the SSD next week hah.
I did get my Solo X2 in and sadly it didn't work as I expected on the MacPro3,1. The install was easy, speeds were great BUT boot times went up and booting back and forth to windows was a headache. I did hear this goes away with later systems but oh well.