The 768GB Flash Storage $1300 club

[animatedude]

anyone here placed or going to place an order for an iMac with the 768GB flash storage?

my next purchase wether it's Mac mini or iMac, is going to be an all flash storage option.

please share your experiences here and spare us the whole "you can buy much cheaper SSD from amazon", some of us don't like to mess with equipments and rather pay a premium for Apple product/service.

[Rove]

yep. I went all SSD nearly 4 years ago when I built my own PC. Every computer I have owned since has been all SSD. I can't go backwards.

[theanimala]

I don't know why most people would need that much SSD. Having all of your programs on SSD I can understand, but for the average user having your music / pictures / files on HD is fast enough. Does it really make sense to have a 100GB iTunes library on SSD?

[Rove]

Originally Posted by theanimala

I don't know why most people would need that much SSD. Having all of your programs on SSD I can understand, but for the average user having your music / pictures / files on HD is fast enough. Does it really make sense to have a 100GB iTunes library on SSD?

My desktop is in my bedroom and if I can reduce the noise a spinning drive makes (and an SSD drive is silent) then its worth it. If Apple sold the 512 GB SSD, I admit I would go for that one instead.

[plucky duck]

For the price, I'd consider the 2011 model and installing two 512GB drives instead or consider external thunderbolt SSD solutions.

[gagaliya]

$1300 price point is a complete fail.

[inscrewtable]

Originally Posted by Rove

My desktop is in my bedroom and if I can reduce the noise a spinning drive makes (and an SSD drive is silent) then its worth it. If Apple sold the 512 GB SSD, I admit I would go for that one instead.

You could use an external drive for music and other stuff that does not need a fast drive, something like the newertech voyager q dock, which having no fan is completely silent combined with a WD caviar green drive which is barely audible and you are running pretty well noiselessly. Plus you can plug another external into the dock for a backup.

[forty2j]

Originally Posted by theanimala

I don't know why most people would need that much HDD. Having all of your programs on HDD I can understand, but for the average user having your music / pictures / files on CD is fast enough. Does it really make sense to have a 100MB MP3 library on HDD?

I've updated the above to reflect the opinion of circa 1992.

[MisterKeeks]

Originally Posted by animatedude

rather pay a premium for Apple product

The SSDs in Macs aren't made by Apple. Usually they are Samsung. Because of that, I don't know why you would pay a premium for a lesser product, unless it turns out that it would cost more to put a similarly sized SSD into the iMac, including the cost of installation.

[burninggarlic]

“shut up and take my money” CLUB

[hfg]

External SSD Thunderbolt in that size range aren't going to be cheap either, at least today. Have you checked the price of a larger than 512GB SSD recently?

I did order the 768GB SSD iMac as I didn't want ANY rotating disks (internal or external), and I didn't want to open up the iMac, at least until the warranty period was over.

I do plan on adding my existing 1TB SSD (2 x 512 M4 drives, RAID-0, in a LaCie "Little Big Disk" ThunderBolt enclosure) which contains my photo library externally to the iMac. The internal 768GB SSD will be fine for the rest of my OS X environment and a BootCamp Windows installation for some occasional gaming.

$1000 DIY 1TB SSD: 2ea $400 SSD drives + a $200 Thunderbolt enclosure (with a couple of HD left over) at todays prices. I already have the RAID-0 SSD running in my Mac Pro ... I just bought a refurb LaCie TB disk drive and removed the disks for the enclosure to use with the new iMac.


-howard

[flynz4]

I am finished buying any "personal use" computers with internal spinning media. We are in a transition period now with the iMac... and in a few more years, solid state storage will be the only option. I'm not going to wait. Other than my wife's 2009 iMac (which had no SSD option at the time)... we have been 100% SSD since early 2008.

I'll continue to buy external bulk storage based on HDDs... but even then... for daily use, I'll use fast arrays (Pegasus R4)... and do my best to keep them [acoustically] away from the work area.

/Jim

[burninggarlic]

Promise Pegasus R4 4TB (4x1TB) RAID System

$1,099.00

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H5...olt#tech-specs

This **** will really mess you up. Smart ass!

[hfg]

...and then there is this one too ...

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H9...n?fnode=5f&p=1

[flynz4]

Originally Posted by burninggarlic

Promise Pegasus R4 4TB (4x1TB) RAID System

$1,099.00

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H5...olt#tech-specs

This **** will really mess you up. Smart ass!

I have the 8TB version... and it is remarkable.

/Jim

[sectime]

Originally Posted by burninggarlic

“shut up and take my money” CLUB

Got the asshat post out the way pretty quick burninggarlic. There are better price/storage options but all are external. The op clearly wants internal SDS with Apple warranty. Money never posted as an issue.

[vannibombonato]

Originally Posted by sectime

Got the asshat post out the way pretty quick burninggarlic. There are better price/storage options but all are external. The op clearly wants internal SDS with Apple warranty. Money never posted as an issue.

You can't reason with the assumption of "money is no object".
If we do, then we must advise the poster to stick with basic configuration, then pay someone to install the latest and greatest internal SSD while he's away on vacation, and if the Mac fails simply throw it away and purchase another one.

We're trying to be reasonable, that's it.

This said, obviously we are all free to do what we want with our money, we're simply advising people that there are clearly better options for the sake of helping each other, just as much as i believe it would be nice to advise people not to purchase Apple Ram. We're just trying to help.

[burninggarlic]

Originally Posted by sectime

Got the asshat post out the way pretty quick burninggarlic. There are better price/storage options but all are external. The op clearly wants internal SDS with Apple warranty. Money never posted as an issue.

Great point！

External hard disks go wrong, you just have to send your hard disks to them, and use the back up hard disks for a while.

Internal hard disk goes wrong, you have to send your entire computer to them. Shall I assume you have external back ups?

[Richard Peters]

I'm torn 50/50

I really really wish it wasn't as expensive as it is but there isn't much I can do about that. Having been spoiled by an SSD Air I'm far too used to the speed now.

As a photographer I need to access a large database of large files randomly, which puts Fusion out the window as my style of file access use will rarely, if ever, benefit from the SSD side of Fusion.

Secondly, I won't even begin to know how to open a brand new iMac up and start trying to put an SSD in myself. Not only do I not have the knowledge, but I don't want to have to go and buy tools to do the job either. I just want to open the box, turn it on and have a snappy computer to work on my photos (and the odd bit of video).

If I get the SSD I have to pay £1040 here in the UK for it.

The other option is to get something like this Lacie external 1TB SSD and the standard Fusion drive.

That's going to cost me £20 more than the Apple SSD (£200 for 1TB Fusion plus £860 for Lacie) but requires I have 'another' hard drive on the desk alongside the current backup one.
Edit: Just spotted that Lacie is £749 from Apple.

This solution also requires me to know for certain (which I do not at this stage) that if I never use more than 128gb on the Fusion, that it will never put anything on the HDD and the HDD will never spin up and potentially slow down anything I may be doing.

Bottom line for me is, given the two options, as crazy as it sounds I'm swaying towards the Apple SSD as even though I'll get slightly less storage for daily use, it means one less hard drive to have on the desktop!

[Pie Chips Salad]

Originally Posted by animatedude

anyone here placed or going to place an order for an iMac with the 768GB flash storage?

my next purchase wether it's Mac mini or iMac, is going to be an all flash storage option.

please share your experiences here and spare us the whole "you can buy much cheaper SSD from amazon", some of us don't like to mess with equipments and rather pay a premium for Apple product/service.

You must buy the ssd it's the way of the future. By the way I have a mac mini server dual ssd set to raid zero and have 800 mbs + read / write speeds!

I think it will prolong the life of the system also and keep heat down. You won't regret it. I think the fusion is half assed and if part of the disc breaks the whole thing is out. All or nothing.

[Yebubbleman]

Originally Posted by animatedude

anyone here placed or going to place an order for an iMac with the 768GB flash storage?

my next purchase wether it's Mac mini or iMac, is going to be an all flash storage option.

please share your experiences here and spare us the whole "you can buy much cheaper SSD from amazon", some of us don't like to mess with equipments and rather pay a premium for Apple product/service.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but it really is a waste of money. You are literally paying the cost of another entry-level iMac/13" MacBook Pro for an SSD that will likely plummet in price in the next year or two. This is why Apple is putting in place the Fusion Drive options on its desktops and switching its laptops to SSD-only designs. Apple knows that SSDs are the future, but that they are otherwise too costly to be the present. I mean, it's your money, but geez man, that's a lot of money. It takes most people quite a while to earn $1300 that they can throw at a single computer upgrade, let alone a new computer.

[iMcLovin]

Yep I bought the 768 flash storage and everything else I could slap onto it through BTO. I ordered a 2big 6tb LaCie which I will use as backup and extra storage. Going to go raid on the 2 big so the. I think I'm pretty secured

[iMcLovin]

I wish there were a 1.5 tb flash option

[cosmicjoke]

sure seems like there's a lot of people who don't belong to the club hanging out in this thread lol

[iMcLovin]

Another benefit from choosing 768ssd is that you will get to use power nap. I'm curious if you will get this with fusion drive (?)

----------

Originally Posted by vannibombonato

No one says you or the other guys in the club are mentally ill, it's just that the idea of spending that kind of money in order not to have the risk of having an empty drive spinning is, i think you can concede this, a bit eccentric, as with less of the money you could have a faster and bigger drive.

Again, as most of you guys agree that you'll need something on the desk besides the imac, the only reasons so far standing seems to get the internal SSD so that you don't risk the empty HDD inside the iMac spinning.

Which is fair, simply eccentric :-)

The fusion won't be faster than the 768 ssd. It may be the same speed while using the ssd- but just a fraction of what most people have on their hdd will fit there.

So maybe a bit eccentric but also mighty fine