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Take a Chance with 3TB Fusion?

K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
Caught up in minds about whether to go 1TB Fusion or 3TB Fusion, want to be able to bootcamp Windows for Games, but its probably only 15% of what I would use my mac for.. however the ability to play games does also effect my other choices with graphics card.

Would you take a chance with a 3TB fusion drive in the hope that in the near future you will be able to bootcamp a windows Install onto it?

Or play it safe with a 1TB drive, which is really pushing the envelope for space for me.
 
thedeejay

thedeejay

macrumors 65816
Aug 16, 2012
1,338
51
Toronto, Canada.
kaelell said:
Caught up in minds about whether to go 1TB Fusion or 3TB Fusion, want to be able to bootcamp Windows for Games, but its probably only 15% of what I would use my mac for.. however the ability to play games does also effect my other choices with graphics card.

Would you take a chance with a 3TB fusion drive in the hope that in the near future you will be able to bootcamp a windows Install onto it?

Or play it safe with a 1TB drive, which is really pushing the envelope for space for me.
Click to expand...

1TB for sure. 3TB is a lot of space. What you gonna store that'll take up 1 or even 3 TB? And nowadays external HDD's are dirt cheap do don't worry you'll be fine
 
K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
My previous imac I sold recently was 1TB and I had to really manually shift files around.

(photographer/video editor)
150GB music / 200GB edited photos (with originals stored externally, 150GB bootcamp ) thats already over half gone, without accounting for applications/documents/Videos and my Downloads folder of movies.

Already I use external drives for storage,editing videos and backups but there are times when I reach 80%+ capacity whilst working on a project and was hoping to not have to worry about moving things around so much.
+and given bad experiences with loosing data on external drives, im all for having multiple copies of files over different media until a completion of a project.

But alas you are right, 1TB is what i'm leaning towards.
 
Razorhog

Razorhog

macrumors 65816
Sep 16, 2006
1,148
116
Arkansas
Go with the 1TB to be safe for bootcamp. If you need more storage in the future, get a USB3 or Thunderbolt external.
 
V

vladfein

macrumors regular
May 28, 2012
151
0
Razorhog said:
...If you need more storage in the future, get a USB3 or Thunderbolt external.
Click to expand...

Make sure you stack it neatly on top of your Time Capsule, external ODD and whatever else you have dangling from that All-in-One beauty :)
 
xgman

xgman

macrumors 603
Aug 6, 2007
5,672
1,378
If I'm going to spend this much money on a drive, I might as well buy some expensive TB duo drives and at least can replace the drives in the future with anything I want. Ironically, whatever I spec the imac with internally will end up being used as a storage drive of some sort. A nice fast SSD in a TB enclosure should be a nice booting drive, and less expensive overall than Apple's.
 
gnasher729

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
kaelell said:
Caught up in minds about whether to go 1TB Fusion or 3TB Fusion, want to be able to bootcamp Windows for Games, but its probably only 15% of what I would use my mac for.. however the ability to play games does also effect my other choices with graphics card.

Would you take a chance with a 3TB fusion drive in the hope that in the near future you will be able to bootcamp a windows Install onto it?

Or play it safe with a 1TB drive, which is really pushing the envelope for space for me.
Click to expand...

For Bootcamp, you should be able to use a cheap external USB 3 drive.
 
MatthewAMEL

MatthewAMEL

macrumors 6502
Oct 23, 2007
380
13
Orlando, FL
The Boot Camp 3TB issue isn't related to FusionDrive. It's not a new problem. It just so happens this is the 1st time Apple has offered a BTO with a drive that exceeds 2.2TB which is the MBR limit for boot devices.

Don't get the 3TB Fusion Drive if you want to use Boot Camp.
 
M

Mac32

Suspended
Nov 20, 2010
1,263
454
But can you use an internal 3tb fusion drive for OSX, and an external thunderbolt SSD for bootcamp/windows 7? That is the big question.
Anyone?
 
xgman

xgman

macrumors 603
Aug 6, 2007
5,672
1,378
Mac32 said:
But can you use an internal 3tb fusion drive for OSX, and an external thunderbolt SSD for bootcamp/windows 7? That is the big question.
Anyone?
Click to expand...

If you can somehow image windows onto the external drive, I don't see why that wouldn't work.
 
K

kaelell

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2009
346
0
gnasher729 said:
For Bootcamp, you should be able to use a cheap external USB 3 drive.
Click to expand...

I believe you cannot bootcamp windows from external drive, unless you install OS x on it first then bootcamp.

do correct me if I am wrong.




source: various other threads of people unsuccessfully trying to
 
M

Mac32

Suspended
Nov 20, 2010
1,263
454
Arggggggghhhh, I thought that was only for USB2/3.
This is infuriating. Why couldn't Apple just have a 256gb SSD + 3tb HD option.
 
Last edited:
M

Mac32

Suspended
Nov 20, 2010
1,263
454
What about this: Install Windows 7 on your fusion drive (after decreasing the size of the partition in Disk Utility to 2 gb or less), then cloning the partition with SuperDuper! to an external SSD. After that, just install OSX over the old Windows 7 installation in your iMac. Voila, you can boot your iMac from either your external thunderbolt SSD, or the internal fusion drive.
That should work, right?
 
Last edited:
xgman

xgman

macrumors 603
Aug 6, 2007
5,672
1,378
Mac32 said:
What about this: Install Windows 7 on your fusion drive (after decreasing the size of the partition in Disk Utility to 2 gb or less), then cloning the partition with SuperDuper! to an external SSD. After that, just install OSX over the old Windows 7 installation in your iMac. Voila, you can boot your iMac from either your external thunderbolt SSD, or the internal fusion drive.
That should work, right?
Click to expand...


Are you allowed to partition a fusion drive?
 
MatthewAMEL

MatthewAMEL

macrumors 6502
Oct 23, 2007
380
13
Orlando, FL
You can partition a Fusion Drive. The limitation is only one partition and it must be on the HDD.

I have read reports of people booting Windows using external drives and Winclone. Boot Camp will not install on an external, so getting the windows image on the external would be the trick.
 
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