Fusion Drive Now Available as Option for Low End 21.5" iMac

[jnkatriya]

What is problem if they offer for mac mini low end?

[Irishman]

Originally Posted by tech4all

Someone sounds a bit bitter!

Screwed in that they had to spend even more money for the high end iMac to get the Fusion. A $500 difference!

Not really. The faster proc and upgraded gpu was of more use to me than the performance of the fusion drive.

[gtg660w]

Originally Posted by Icaras

Yea. I really don't like this new trend of Apple updating BTO options after a Mac has been released. They did it with the MacBook Pro 15" retina and they are doing it again with the new iMac.

Seriously this time..... Steve would never have allowed this. Really though, this kind of behavior hardly ever happened under Steve's watch.

Are you kidding??....Steve was on watch when the original iPhone came out in 07 and the price was dropped by $200 only a couple months later. He has done stunts like this numerous times.

http://news.cnet.com/apples-iphone-p...3-6206367.html

A re-occurring issue with most Apple enthusiasts is that they expect the product they buy to be the latest tech for at least a year before Apple decides to up the specs again. In this rapid pace society, having expectations like that is not realistic anymore.

[zivilist]

Apple should offer a 1 TB hdd with 7200 rpm instead in low end macs. And of cause a bigger graphic card with at least 1 GB VRAM.

Or only a 256 GB SSD for 200 USD and a 512 GB SSD for 350 USD.

[jasonefmonk]

Originally Posted by FuNGi

Dude! Don't you know that you have a slow drive with a greater chance of failure! 😎

I don't know which drive you are talking about but they were both well reviewed on Newegg, and my computer is by no means slow. Boot times in ~15 seconds compared to 45+.

[Icaras]

Originally Posted by gtg660w

Are you kidding??....Steve was on watch when the original iPhone came out in 07 and the price was dropped by $200 only a couple months later. He has done stunts like this numerous times.

True, but I was talking about Macs, specifically.

[hayesk]

While we are all arguing about hard drive failure statistics, why aren't we just telling people to back up like they should?

Oh, one of the drives failed, and now the fusion drive is toast. So what? Replace the bad drive, restore from backup, and you're back in business.

----------

Originally Posted by gtg660w

Are you kidding??....Steve was on watch when the original iPhone came out[/url]

A re-occurring issue with most Apple enthusiasts is that they expect the product they buy to be the latest tech for at least a year before Apple decides to up the specs again. In this rapid pace society, having expectations like that is not realistic anymore.

Agreed. We need a WWSJD law. That law states that any argument that asserts that SJ never would have done or allowed something should just be ignored.

[MacDav]

Originally Posted by majkom

If you are discussing chance of error rised by fusing two drives... (I havent read whole discussion, too long), it does not double, it rises but you cant say it doubles. Take it - probability of failure of each of the disk is independent event (this is fact according to theory of probability), lets say Prob. for HDD has 20 perent, Prob. for SSD has 10 percent, than the probability of failure of fused disk is (0.2*0.9 + 0.8*0.1 + 0.2*0.1)*100=28 percent - so yes, fused drive has bigger probability to fail than single HDD or SSD.

The possibility of data corruption caused by the O/S rises also. Since the O/S is writing to two different drives both reads and writes have more chance of error. Same with raid arrays. Backups are important.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

The early descriptions of Apple's implementation describe it as an OS-directed file-level placement technique. Where is it describes as a block-level optimization?

That was the very first description in public, meant for an audience that is not too knowledgable, and "the OS puts files that you use a lot onto the fast SSD drive, and files that you don't use much onto the hard drive" is something that the average user can easily understand. It's not technically accurate.

Originally Posted by majkom

If you are discussing chance of error rised by fusing two drives... (I havent read whole discussion, too long), it does not double, it rises but you cant say it doubles. Take it - probability of failure of each of the disk is independent event (this is fact according to theory of probability), ....

What makes you think hard drive failures would be independent? If 100 people each hold up a MBP with a DIY fusion drive over their head, and one of them drops his MBP, then you will have one broken SSD drive and one broken hard drive - both in the same MBP. Rough treatment, broken fan that leads to overheating, power spikes, there are lots of things that will affect both drives. Which means drive failures are correlated, which means the probability for "any failure" isn't twice as high with two drives.

[majkom]

Originally Posted by MacDav

The possibility of data corruption caused by the O/S rises also. Since the O/S is writing to two different drives both reads and writes have more chance of error. Same with raid arrays. Backups are important.

OK, I am not technically educated enough to know if HDD and SSD failures are rally independent events - i wrote that knowing that those two probabilities are independent.. if you are right, the probability of failure for fussion may be higher than I showed in my example.. back ups are not 100 percent solution - imagine disk failing in your imac just after end of apple care - not an easy thing to solve

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

That was the very first description in public, meant for an audience that is not too knowledgable, and "the OS puts files that you use a lot onto the fast SSD drive, and files that you don't use much onto the hard drive" is something that the average user can easily understand. It's not technically accurate.

In that case, please post links to "technically accurate" descriptions of the technology.

[MacDav]

Originally Posted by majkom

OK, I am not technically educated enough to know if HDD and SSD failures are rally independent events - i wrote that knowing that those two probabilities are independent.. if you are right, the probability of failure for fussion may be higher than I showed in my example.. back ups are not 100 percent solution - imagine disk failing in your imac just after end of apple care - not an easy thing to solve

If your disk fails in an iMac just boot up from your latest back up using an external drive enclosure. Doesn't really matter if you have Apple care or not. I would never buy Apple care for any reason, total waste of money for me. Replacing the drive in an iMac is more trouble than it should be, but for me it's still doable. If Apple throws the Mac Pro under the bus then I'll just have to build my own PC's again like I used to every year before I bought the 8 core Mac Pro.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

In that case, please post links to "technically accurate" descriptions of the technology.

Read the arstechnica articles.

[ipmasta]

I dont know about the iMacs but I have a late 2011 17" macbook pro laptop that I bought an optidrive adapter and installed a 750gb 7200 rpm hd and an ocz 120gb ssd (Cost me $90) and I set them up as a fusion drive. Also did the same in my mac mini server (Mid 2011). So for around $100 bucks you can get an ssd and upgrade your mac mini or macbook pro older model to a fusion drive yourself. The performance is definitely noticable. Because of this im running a quad core 2gig i7 mac mini with fusion drive and 16gigs of ram and a 17" macbook pro with a quad core 2.4 and 16gigs of ram and a fusion drive - I dont see any reason to upgrade for now. You can find the tutorial online and also your computer has to be able to run mountain lion - as lion doesnt support a fusion drive setup.

[joe-h2o]

Originally Posted by roverma

Wrong.... Cost had nothing to do with it, the only reason was space in the 21" enclosure......

I mean in comparison to the 1TB "extremely common and affordable" 7200 rpm 2.5" drives that the guy I was replying to seems to think should be in the iMac.

There was a definite cost issue between the two different 2.5" drives - the 7200 rpm model is over $100 more expensive.

[szw-mapple fan]

Originally Posted by cambookpro

No, more storage options were added to the low-end 15" rMBP after launch.

Oh, OK. Thanks.