So how are you liking the Fusion drive?

CapnJackGig said:

Speed isn't a real factor for me. A couple seconds here and there mean nothing. The only real plus I can see is the silence. My MacBook Air makes no noise unless a fan kicks on. How quiet are people with the fusion drive on the iMac finding it to be?

Click to expand...

Completely for me and I have about 600 gigs left of my fusion drive. The fans kicked in a little when I realised I had smc fan control installed from transferring of data, but since deleting that, its been completely silent, at the moment I'm doing a lot of imports of different media and using the computer yet still quiet

palmerc2 said:

Nice!! I've never used an SSD, I've always had a 7200RPM drive. I'm going to order the new iMac shortly, and am deciding on whether or not to get Fusion.

I did just ask this question on another thread, so sorry for duplicate post - I'd just like to get different feedback: I work with large video files (average between 5GB and 15GB) and while I work on them I'd like them to be on the SSD, but after I'm done can I manually transfer them to the HDD so they're off of the SDD? If I have a few of these video files they'll fill up the SSD portion pretty damn quick! Or better yet can I choose folders I can exclude from the SSD portion (similar to Time Machine)?

Click to expand...

I don't think you get any of those options. Basically if the OS sees you are accessing a file a lot it will try to move it to the SSD. If you stop using it and open other files it will be moved back over when space is needed on the SSD for newer files.

Chris Blount said:

I was doing that as well. Just placing the computer to sleep. Now with the fusion drive, there is no need to do that. Bootup is about 15 seconds.

----------

I've noticed that my iMac is completely silent. I can't even hear the 5400 RPM hard drive.

As far as a couple of seconds here in there, with the fusion drive its much more than just a few seconds. In 20 seconds I can do a full bootup, check my e-mail and start surfing the web.

Click to expand...

Not a factor for me. In the 3 years I've owned my 24 inch iMac, I probably cold booted 5-10 times.

----------

Chris Blount said:

People are talking about the Fusion drive corrupting easily. The iPads, iPhones and iPods seem to not have any problem with SSD's. I have never had to reload the OS into any of those devices since the first iPhone.

Sure, we may be talking about Apple's and Oranges here, but I think you know what I'm driving at.

Click to expand...

iPads and iPhones don't swap data between SSD and HD. Did you even read the article?

Chris Blount said:

Yes, and he was talking about data loss in the swap, but why is that any different that any SSD taking in and pushing out data?

As I said before, he has never even seen a Fusion drive when he wrote the article so what he wrote is basically speculation.

Click to expand...

Of course every drive has a chance of failure. If you use two drives in combination the chance multiplies. That's just common sense and it's what this article is pointing out. It's the same "problem" people have had for decades with RAID 0 striping across two hard drives, so, nothing new. If you are paranoid about drive failures then don't get a Fusion drive. Personally I do regular backups and don't worry about drive failures.

There are two reasons to think that a Fusion drive might be more reliable than just using two drives equally (as you would with a RAID 0 setup). First is that if all your frequently accessed files are on the SSD, then the hard drive can usually be spun down and that might mean less wear and tear on the hard drive and longer longevity. Second is that my guess is that a modern SSD is much more reliable and will last longer than a hard drive, so adding an SSD to your drive setup (as Fusion does) is almost irrelevant in terms of reliability.

One nit to pick with the article is the reference to HFS+ being unreliable. I followed the links and read the explanation and I consider it to be bulls***. Basically the guy's argument is that if you corrupt an HSF+ volume on purpose, then diskutil might report that the drive appears to be fine anyway. Well, who cares? If you corrupt any drive on purpose it will become "unreliable," irrelevant of what disk utilities you run on the drive and what they tell you. So I would take this article with a grain of salt.

CapnJackGig said:

After reading the zdnet article warning against the Fusion drive, my decision was made a lot easier.

Click to expand...

I can't see anything in that article "warning against" the Fusion drive. There is a bit of opinion, badly researched, and a few responses along the lines of "nowadays all it takes is Google and not a clue to write an article".

Or did you mean "if the people at zdnet warn against it then it must be really good"?

PS. Just noticed a link to a _different_ ZDNet article. Look, the guy is completely clueless. His objections against Fusion have nothing to do with how Fusion really works. I'm not saying there are no objections possible, but what he writes is nonsense. For example, he expects sudden stops when the Fusion drive moves data around. That's nonsense. There is _never_ a time when data _must_ be moved. Worst case, if you copy 10 GB onto the Fusion Drive and there is no space left on the SSD part, the data just goes to the HD and Fusion sorts out things later. In the very worst case, Fusion is always at least as fast as the HD.

kaelell said:

for those who already have a fusion drive, is there anyway to see what is installed where or manage folders to be excluded?

Click to expand...

1. No.
2. No, and you don't actually want to do this anyway.

jclardy said:

I don't think you get any of those options. Basically if the OS sees you are accessing a file a lot it will try to move it to the SSD. If you stop using it and open other files it will be moved back over when space is needed on the SSD for newer files.

Click to expand...

It doesn't work at a file level, it works at a block level.


You could have the most used blocks of a OS file (say a *.mov) living on the SSD, and the least used blocks of that same file on the HDD.

And there is no control over where it goes. It just uses a heatmap algorithm to make sure the most used blocks are on the SSD.

Slow Programmer said:

http://www.zdnet.com/mac-fusion-drive-pro-users-beware-7000006661/

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link

CapnJackGig was asked earlier for that and failed to provide it, most likely due to being rebellious

Squeak825 said:

It doesn't work at a file level, it works at a block level.


You could have the most used blocks of a OS file (say a *.mov) living on the SSD, and the least used blocks of that same file on the HDD.

And there is no control over where it goes. It just uses a heatmap algorithm to make sure the most used blocks are on the SSD.

Click to expand...

Have you got a reference for that assertion. Everything I've found online indicates that this works at a file level.

JustMartin said:

Have you got a reference for that assertion. Everything I've found online indicates that this works at a file level.

Click to expand...

Check out the arstechnica article.

And if you followed several discussions here, there is just no way this could possibly work at a file level.

I've got a fusion drive. I have about 180Gb of storage, so it is overflowing onto the hard drive but for day to day performance it feels very much like it is all running on an SSD.

reclusive46 said:

I've got a fusion drive. I have about 180Gb of storage, so it is overflowing onto the hard drive but for day to day performance it feels very much like it is all running on an SSD.

Click to expand...

That's the main thing, if in day to day activities it feels like you are running on a pure SSD then the fusion drive is doing a great job.

i ordered the 27 inch with the fd. did alot of research on it too.. i use external drives mostly to store my data and video editing, if you can keep it under the 128 you will never use the hdd and therefore your whole system will be ssd

Fatboy71 said:

I only asked if you could provide the link, don't bother next time if you can't do so without giving a smart arse comment!

Click to expand...

Then start using your 3 braincells.
Like i told you, i found the link... and it wasn't that hard.
So yeah, i am an ass.. who cares

To be on topic:
The Fusion Drive is nice, but i ordered a 27" with the 786GB SSD.
I like the amount of space you can get, but with my video and photo Database, it's all SSD for me to speed it really up.
I like it on my Mac mini cause it makes sense there, but not on my work horse aka the 27" that will come in January.
That's where i want full speed and use a 250GB Bootcamp partition and a Mac OSX partition, both on an SSD.
The 128GB SSD from the Fusion drive is way to small for that.

ThaDog said:

Google: ZDNet Fusiondrive
2nd hit... was that so difficult?
Your question about a link to the article took you longer........

Click to expand...

We aren't all from America, making this link show up a lot lower than the second link.

ThaDog said:

Then start using your 3 braincells.
Like i told you, i found the link... and it wasn't that hard.

Click to expand...

I was polite enough in the way I asked for the link, and yeah I did look on ZDNET briefly, but couldn't find it, that's why I then asked for the link to be provided. These forums are all about getting help, and giving help.

gnasher729 said:

Check out the arstechnica article.

And if you followed several discussions here, there is just no way this could possibly work at a file level.

Click to expand...

arstechnica sadly seems to be the only media so far that has understood what the fusion drive really is and provided the only relevant testing procedure among all review websites.

None of the other websites have bothered to test beyond their usual benchmarks, which copy 10Gb of data or so in and out of the drive. That is ridiculous as the 'fusion' part in 'fusion drive' only kicks in after 128Gb of data stored.

Jord5i said:

We aren't all from America, making this link show up a lot lower than the second link.

Click to expand...

Ok, that i really didn't know.
Here in Switzerland, the link was at the 2nd place.

atteligibility said:

arstechnica sadly seems to be the only media so far that has understood what the fusion drive really is and provided the only relevant testing procedure among all review websites.

None of the other websites have bothered to test beyond their usual benchmarks, which copy 10Gb of data or so in and out of the drive. That is ridiculous as the 'fusion' part in 'fusion drive' only kicks in after 128Gb of data stored.

Click to expand...

That's the whole point.

I have a 2010 iMac with an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 240GB SSD fitted in 2010 and it has performed faultlessly. Boots in about 14 seconds. Perfick.

When my 2012 iMac arrives with its Fusion Drive it will be similar in operation

no doubt and so far my other Flash Drives [smaller 16/32/8 GB ones] have not

failed either.

gnasher729 said:

Check out the arstechnica article.

And if you followed several discussions here, there is just no way this could possibly work at a file level.

Click to expand...

Yep. It operates in increments of 128KB chunks (Core Storage blocks).

(This is Lee--I wrote the Ars articles on Fusion Drive, including the detail walkthrough, which includes testing on Fusion Drive and a discussion of how and why it works.)

pokrface said:

Yep. It operates in increments of 128KB chunks (Core Storage blocks).

(This is Lee--I wrote the Ars articles on Fusion Drive, including the detail walkthrough, which includes testing on Fusion Drive and a discussion of how and why it works.)

Click to expand...

That was a great article, thanks for writing it!

Wonder if you'd answer a couple questions I had since you seem to be somewhat of a guru!!

First off, the Ars article implied that if you had less than the SSD capacity of data on the drive then it would only use SSD...is that actually true? It looked like it was tested by copying files on and observing nothing was moved to the HDD...but is it possible that if you left the data alone for a few days it would define it as "infrequently used data" and move it over to the HDD? That was something I was wondering...


Also one more question, do you know if there's any intelligent sorting based on "type" of file? As in its much more useful to have apps or OS data on the SSD rather than media files, does Fusion discriminate?

Thanks for your time!

Yougotcarved said:

That was a great article, thanks for writing it!

Wonder if you'd answer a couple questions I had since you seem to be somewhat of a guru!!

First off, the Ars article implied that if you had less than the SSD capacity of data on the drive then it would only use SSD...is that actually true? It looked like it was tested by copying files on and observing nothing was moved to the HDD...but is it possible that if you left the data alone for a few days it would define it as "infrequently used data" and move it over to the HDD? That was something I was wondering...


Also one more question, do you know if there's any intelligent sorting based on "type" of file? As in its much more useful to have apps or OS data on the SSD rather than media files, does Fusion discriminate?

Thanks for your time!

Click to expand...

As the article AND pokrface explained a couple of posts ago, it does not move files, it moves CoreStorage blocks of 128Kb around. It has no insight to OS-level files.

Also, no blocks spill over to the slower drive unless the faster drive is full (including have the write space buffer).

Squeak825 said:

As the article AND pokrface explained a couple of posts ago, it does not move files, it moves CoreStorage blocks of 128Kb around. It has no insight to OS-level files.

Also, no blocks spill over to the slower drive unless the faster drive is full (including have the write space buffer).

Click to expand...

I understand it moves blocks not files, but I thought that a block of file type A might be seen differently from a block of file type B

Thanks for your answer

I do not think Fusion is a good idea for the "pro users." I like consistency of file transfers, - read and writes. I want a pure SSD, with no "spill." Nothing more annoying than fast transfers..... and suddenly they become slow transfers. No thanks. SSD all the way. For me it was an easy decision. Thunderbolt Samsung 830 256GB, connected via Thunderbolt as a boot drive.

Reasoning?:

1.) Pure SSD speed. Thunderbolt SSD might be marginally slower than an internal SSD, but we're talking unnoticeable day to day. (I benched 390 MB reads and 340MB writes, as I recall, connected via Thunderbolt to my 2011 Mac mini. I expect similar (better?) results with a 2012 iMac when it shows up).

2.) Easy to remove and hide when going on vacation etc in case of break in. Just unplug it!

3.) Can then eject internal HDD because there's nothing more obnoxious than the sound of a spinning hard drive.

4.) Never having to wait for spinning disk to spin up = win.

I can see the logic in the Fusion disk idea, - but for me - no thanks. For the average user it's probably fine, but I like a bit more control over what goes where.