So how are you liking the Fusion drive?

[Chris Blount]

Yesterday I received my 21.5" maxed out iMac with Fusion drive.

First I transferred about 400GB of stuff from my old iMac.

At first the speed was pretty good but not fantastic. Then, after about 1/2 hour of using Safari and some other of my most used applications, the speed really started to pickup. I could tell that iMac was "learning". Now the speed is incredible. iTunes opens before the first bounce. Safari opens and surfs very complext sites like a champ and Final Cut Pro X takes less than 5 seconds to completely open with my last project loaded. Bootup also takes less than 15 seconds.

Did anyone else notice the learning curve?

Also I ran a test and the read speeds are about 390. Not too shabby. I actually like the fact I don't need to worry about what files are on which drive. Makes life a bit easier managing files and apps IMHO.

The whole system is also whisper quiet. Very pleased so far.

[palmerc2]

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)?

[seble]

Well I filled my drive up a lot. 700gigs left. It's still mega fast with booting up and things. I've been doing a lot of imports into aperture etc. and it's supeeeeerrr fast for the first 4gigs or so then it really slows down! This is fine usually as it improves the overall speed of imports.

Havent been using it enough for 'fusion' to kick in so we will have to wait and see but SSD is already helping in some aspects

[Fatboy71]

I'm debating on whether to go with the Fusion drive or not when I order my iMac early next year.

Boot times are not important to me has I will be sleeping my iMac the vast amount of the time, rather than shutting it down when I've finished, as its advised to do this the majority of the time.

I rarely work with very large files and my main reason for considering the Fusion drive would be to speed up Application loading times such as iTunes and other Applications I would be using.

I was wondering.

Once the Fusion drive is full, any other Applications I would be installing would then go on the hard drive. So if for example I had an Application on the Fusion Drive that I'd either not used for a while or a newly installed Application that I'd began using more than some other Application that was resident on the Fusion Drive. Would this Application then be transferred to the Fusion Drive, and an older lesser used Application would then be moved to the hard drive?

Thanks.

[Chris Blount]

Originally Posted by Fatboy71

Boot times are not important to me has I will be sleeping my iMac the vast amount of the time, rather than shutting it down when I've finished, as its advised to do this the majority of the time.

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.

----------

Originally Posted by CapnJackGig

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?

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.

[CapnJackGig]

Originally Posted by Chris Blount

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.

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

----------

Originally Posted by Chris Blount

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.

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

[tom vilsack]

As the ssd is 128 gig's i would guess mountain lion and ilife are both installed to ssd part...the reason i suspect it feels faster after a couple hours is spotlight is now done indexing.

[throAU]

Yup, spotlight was likely doing its thing initially... especially if you copied a heap of data over.

[CapnJackGig]

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?

[motrek]

Originally Posted by palmerc2

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)?

I don't have a fusion drive but my understanding is that you can *not* choose what goes where. That being said, I would assume that the fusion drive software will move whatever you're working on onto the SSD and for all intents an purposes it will be like you have a 1TB SSD.

If you want to have fine grained control over what goes where, you can very easily add an SSD to your iMac via USB3 and use it like any other disk. That's what I do and it's very easy to copy files to/from my hard drive.

[jclardy]

Originally Posted by palmerc2

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)?

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.

[Squeak825]

Originally Posted by jclardy

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.

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.

[JustMartin]

Originally Posted by Squeak825

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.

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

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by JustMartin

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

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.

[comatose81]

Greatest upgrade in the history of computing. I would have seriously regretted my purchase had I not gotten it - the speed is great and requires no user input. You can't beat that!

Apple's innovation strikes again.

[Slow Programmer]

http://www.zdnet.com/mac-fusion-driv...re-7000006661/

[Chris Blount]

Originally Posted by Slow Programmer

http://www.zdnet.com/mac-fusion-driv...re-7000006661/

How can that guy have any idea what he's talking about? He hasn't even used or seen one when the article was written. Fail

[mihai.ile]

Given that the fusion is just 2 normal drives (ssd and hdd) one can just reorder everything in terms of storage. Unsplit the fusion, make a partition on ssd or hdd and then fusion the remaining back (so you could reserve 20gb for windows partition on ssd for example). Another example would be to reserve something like 500gb on HDD for slow data and create the fusion back using the remaining 500gb/2.5tb on the hdd and the ssd.

You could even create 2 fusion drives, each having half of ssd and half of hdd, I mean there are just endless ways you could use an ssd+hdd in fusion mode.

I will not get the iMac with fusion because it is expensive here in europe, but I will create a fusion drive using an external SSD and the internal 1TB HDD. It's not that I will go anywhere with the 27" iMac so having an external SSD with one extra cable is not a big issue

[kaelell]

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

[CaptMike]

Originally Posted by Slow Programmer

http://www.zdnet.com/mac-fusion-driv...re-7000006661/

Thanks for the link

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

[leman]

Originally Posted by Slow Programmer

http://www.zdnet.com/mac-fusion-driv...re-7000006661/

Sorry, but the article is entirely stupid. First of all, its baseless speculation (I don't see any tests), second, its full of contradictions. He is criticising HFS+ (quite rightly), but HFS+ does not have anything to do with the Fusion drive, which works underneath the file system layer. And its not like deciding agains Fusion somehow allows you to avoid HFS+. Besides, he writes about files all the time, while Fusion works with blocks.

Anyway, a 'real' professional has a fast external drive (or a drive arrow), formatted with a reliable file system like ZFS. The Fusion is first and foremost designed to work as a main system drive.

[theSeb]

Originally Posted by leman

Sorry, but the article is entirely stupid. First of all, its baseless speculation (I don't see any tests), second, its full of contradictions. He is criticising HFS+ (quite rightly), but HFS+ does not have anything to do with the Fusion drive, which works underneath the file system layer. And its not like deciding agains Fusion somehow allows you to avoid HFS+. Besides, he writes about files all the time, while Fusion works with blocks.

Anyway, a 'real' professional has a fast external drive (or a drive arrow), formatted with a reliable file system like ZFS. The Fusion is first and foremost designed to work as a main system drive.

ZDNet is basically a MS shill site pretending to be full of "journalists". When the ZD Net commentators (look at the comments in the article) tear apart the "article", then you know it can be safely ignored.

Here is an article on Fusion that at least tries to base itself on reality and facts

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10...roll-your-own/

[barefeats]

Originally Posted by theSeb

ZDNet is basically a MS shill site pretending to be full of "journalists". When the ZD Net commentators (look at the comments in the article) tear apart the "article", then you know it can be safely ignored.

Here is an article on Fusion that at least tries to base itself on reality and facts

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10...roll-your-own/

Thanks for that. What is your opinion Lloyd Chamber's take?
http://macperformanceguide.com/macmi...vs-fusion.html

I ordered the 1TB Fusion for our 27" iMac in only out of curiosity on some long term testing. The only way I was able to get it to slow down was to duplicate a pair of HD videos totaling 11G. Then again (22G). Again (44G), etc., until the SSD was full. That's clearly an artificial event.

P.S. I created a Fusion volume on our Mac Pro using the 240G OWC Accelsior + 1TB WDC Velociraptor. Fun stuff.