Apple's Fusion Drive: Faster Performance in a Simple Consumer-Focused Package

dashiel said:

According to Lee over at Ars Fusion is a block based tiering set-up, meaning what you are asking for is likely happening.

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CoreStorage (Fusion) isn't going to 'pin' any particular storage on the SSD for a month ( or any lengthy fixed time period). [ parts of the OS are likely pinned but general user storage isn't. ]

The only context where it would be pinned to the SSD is one where the user does not add another large archive of files (e.g., unload 4-5 16GB SDHC cards from a camera) to the volume. As long as the new stuff added is relatively small to the "free" space on the SSD drive then the 'current project' will stay.

However, if add more data over the course of a month of new data that is 4-10 times the size of this "I'm working on now" project then most of it will likely get pushed off to disk.

Pragmatically, for folks using "average" files this will have no impact. It also has low impact if work on projects before adding large, unrelated data to the disk.

There is about zero chance apps will get control over this. The OS ( CoreStorage) is going to decide what is going to be moved when. Leaving that to application programs is a nightmare waiting to be invoked. Greedy programs will screw up the whole system.

A best Applications could add something like 'touch' which would go out with a background thread and read the files before the user selects them. Most programs aren't that smart to anticipate what is next. Nor do users plan ahead all that often (if there was a command to invoke intent. ).

Rocketman said:

For a decade now on Mac Rumors (with only occasional banning) I have been saying RAMDISC, RAMDISC, RAMDISC. Fusion drive brings as close of a functionality Apple is likely to mass-produce. A Flash + HDD (both commodities) solution.

Good enough, but it's not a RAMDRIVE!!

Rocketman

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http://www.ddrdrive.com/

It's $1600 and deservedly so.

Have fun!

Does anyone think the next MacBook Pro refresh will have these available as a BTO option?

ghostface147 said:

I'm still waiting for an affordable one that's at least 750 gigs.

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It will eventually become affordable, but there is a chance that by then, 750 GB may seem like 250 GB.

milbournosphere said:

He found that it matched Apple's factory FusionDrive speeds for reads, and soundly beat it for writes:

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It is doubtful the $/performance ratio for this "Mac Pro" setup is all that impressive. Yeah it is faster, but pouring an awful lot of money on it try to be as close to as a SSD as possible when Fusion is primarily aimed at being faster than a HDD.

Nice, but it seems temporary. All SSD for all files is the way to go, and will be feasible before too long.

ThisIsNotMe said:

Slow for what, browsing the internet, writing the occasional word file, having a medium sized iPhoto/iTunes library?

LOL - You obviously don't understand the iMac or Mac Mini target market.

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I think the target market is a little broader now that the Mac Pro is 2.5 years from a significant update. I believe some Pros are now moving towards the iMac.

I want to buy an obtibay and an ssd 128 gb for my 2010 15" mbp and do the fusion drive hack with the 5400rpm factory 320gb hdd however i am living in Turkey and i am looking for a website that sells these kind of stuff for reasonable price and that's fairly close. (e.g. england is closer to me than usa)

Nevermind the location, if you can provide me with sites that sell these for reasonable prices i'd be really happy.

thanks in advance

deconstruct60 said:

It is doubtful the $/performance ratio for this "Mac Pro" setup is all that impressive. Yeah it is faster, but pouring an awful lot of money on it try to be as close to as a SSD as possible when Fusion is primarily aimed at being faster than a HDD.

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$/performance gets shifty. On the one hand, yes, you'll pay more for a larger SSD and HDD from a third party. But on the other hand, Apple is gouging for a 128GB SSD paired with 5400 rpm storage. You might pay more overall with a third party solution, but you'll pay less per GB for better performance.

I setup FD on my mac pro and so far the results have been great. There's simply no way for me to get similar results with the HD and SSD formatted separately and manually trying to decide what goes where.

PeterQVenkman said:

When there is an issue, there will be jack one can do about it.

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I'm not sure how that's different from any other drive.

If you have HD and it fails, you replace it.
If you have SSD and it fails, you replace it.
If you have FD and one of the drives fails, you replace it.

eyehop said:

Nice, but it seems temporary. All SSD for all files is the way to go, and will be feasible before too long.

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Maybe someday. But as bigger SSD gets cheaper, people's need for space goes up as well.

milo said:

I'm not sure how that's different from any other drive.

If you have HD and it fails, you replace it.
If you have SSD and it fails, you replace it.
If you have FD and one of the drives fails, you replace it.

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I guess the issue is that you've now doubled the chances of failure because if either of two drives fail, they both fail.

Slackula said:

Does anyone think the next MacBook Pro refresh will have these available as a BTO option?

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Probably not.

The retina options have practically zero chance. ( no room for a HDD ).

The 'classic' MBP's redesigned so that the ODD space is reused as a storage bay and Apple keeps the thickness doesn't look very good. If Apple sells the MBP with the ODD then the "I still use my ODD drive" folks are happy and those that don't need it have 3rd party conversion kits.

If they pull the ODD and just put a mSATA SDD in the space then the "thinness committee" will say the retina models should win. Apple would have to commit to dropping ODD but not chopping height. They could do that. It just isn't the track record of late.

That said, it probably would be a better trade-off to make if they are committed to keeping both of the two lines around for a long while for better diversity.

SSD Longevity?

With all data being first written to the SSD of the Fusion Drive first before being transferred to the HDD, it sounds like the SSD will be very busy. How will all of this writing and rewriting affect the life expectancy of the SSD component? I'm on the verge of purchasing my first Mac and the FD sounds intriguing, but I don't want to be buying something that is going to wear itself out prematurely.

QCassidy352 said:

I guess the issue is that you've now doubled the chances of failure because if either of two drives fail, they both fail.

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But the solution is the same, replace and restore the backup, same as it has always been. My comment was in response to "there will be jack one can do about it".

milo said:

I'm not sure how that's different from any other drive.

If you have HD and it fails, you replace it.
If you have SSD and it fails, you replace it.
If you have FD and one of the drives fails, you replace it.

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In my case failed hardware was replaced (part of why I have backups!), Apple's software wasn't working and I could not create a new time machine backup with a brand new, functional disk.

It's fixed now, but Apple support in my area advised getting a 3rd party solution because they couldn't fix it either. I ended up getting the fix from MacRumors forums.

mdelvecchio said:

...hows that difference than most tech? Fusion isnt a redundancy solution, its a performance solution.

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I never said fusion was a redundancy solution, but I was comparing the simplicity/featureless software of Fusion to Time Machine , so I apologize if I was unclear.

its exactly no different than any other harddrives you may own (or ipods or whatever) -- if things go wrong youd better have a backup.

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My frustration is with Apple's move towards software that happens entirely behind the scenes with no settings (much like time machine, on, off, backup now). When hardware is fine and software isn't working, how does one troubleshoot that? What do you do if day 1 your computer boots in 15 seconds and apps launch like lightning, and day 2 it boots in 45 seconds and apps launch slowly?

You twiddle your thumbs and pray for a system update to fix your issue, or start crawling through log files .

QCassidy352 said:

I guess the issue is that you've now doubled the chances of failure because if either of two drives fail, they both fail.

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That is correct, but again as pointed out failure was an issue before. Therefore everyone should have backups. You don't need a backup "more" because of this. The probably might have to use it goes up, but needed it anyway.

But yes, if the user needs 99.9% uptime then it presents an incrementally increased risk exposure.

milbournosphere said:

$/performance gets shifty. On the one hand, yes, you'll pay more for a larger SSD and HDD from a third party.

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The 3rd party storage drives are not as much of a $/perf problem as the two additional I/O cards being used in addition to the drives. It is almost a RAID card advertisement as much as benchmark with 3rd party drives.

For the price of two RAID cards you can buy a bigger SSD and skip Fusion in a decent number of contexts.

Slackula said:

Does anyone think the next MacBook Pro refresh will have these available as a BTO option?

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There will be no refresh. The only thing they will refresh from here on out is the Retina models. And the Retina's are too thin for a HDD.

PeterQVenkman said:

In my case failed hardware was replaced (part of why I have backups!), Apple's software wasn't working.

It's fixed now, but Apple support in my area advised getting a 3rd party solution because they couldn't fix it either.

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I still don't see how this is any different than not having FD. When there's a hardware failure, it needs to be replaced. And data restored from a backup.

I'm a huge fan of single hard drives, of which I have several. Each single hard drive gets backed up, archived or cloned as needed to another single hard drive. It just seems simpler and more reliable that way.

mslide said:

Yes, SSDs are fast. We've known this for years. You don't need a "Fusion Drive" to have fast boot times and application loading

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Yeah right, I can't wait to get my affordable 3TB SSD installed in 2012.

milo said:

I still don't see how this is any different than not having FD. When there's a hardware failure, it needs to be replaced. And data restored from a backup.

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You don't get it. At all. I'm talking about software failure, not hardware. Hardware failure is easy to fix - buy a new drive, which I did. Apple's software was not working with any new hardware I threw at it, and Apple support gave up on it.

This is what I saw with working hardware.



Of course, if my fusion drive fails on a $2000 iMac, I can't open it up to replace it without voiding the warranty, either. So again, I'm stuck.

Whatever. Enjoy the rest of your day.

I got the Mini, put 16gb memory and dual 240GB Force GT's in Raid 0


it's a beast

for an iMac I would take a fusion drive though

QCassidy352 said:

I guess the issue is that you've now doubled the chances of failure because if either of two drives fail, they both fail.

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Not quite.

SSD drives have limited amount of writes (not really anything to worry about, but writing is what wears them out). In a fusion drive, huge files would be on the hard drive, so it wears out less.

Hard drives wear out through mechanical movement of the head. Tons of little files make the drive head move like mad. In a fusion drive, all the small files would be on the SSD drive, so the hard drive wears out less.