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

[skottichan]

Originally Posted by MattZani

So are you suggesting the 27" iMac isn't targeted at designers and photographers?

The audience that can afford the upgrade.

Also, to correct Mr-Stabby; the 27" defaults with a 7200RPM hard drive. It took about 30 seconds to find that.

[JAT]

Originally Posted by Mr-Stabby

While the Fusion Drive is certainly a fast option, i think everybody is forgetting that the iMac and the Mac Mini do not come with this option by default. It is a £200 upgrade. And what's more, the drive that it DOES come with (even the high spec iMacs come with this drive by default) is a pathetically slow (as we can see in the video on this article) 5400rpm drive. Apple should have put a 128gb SSD in the iMacs at least by default, but instead they've actually put in a drive that's a lot slower than the model it replaced. I'm not paying £200 extra on top of the already overpriced iMac to get a drive that performs the way a 2012 iMac should do. Sorry rant over.

So.....you don't like choice? Where am I, is this still MacRumors?

[nsfw]

I don't understand why this is so hard?

lrwxr-xr-x 1 503 20 34 Jul 3 15:44 Pictures -> /Volumes/Mini/Users/m/Pictures/
lrwxr-xr-x 1 503 20 31 Jul 3 15:45 Music -> /Volumes/Mini/Users/m/Music/
lrwxr-xr-x 1 503 20 35 Jul 3 15:46 Downloads -> /Volumes/Mini/Users/m/Downloads/
lrwxr-xr-x 1 503 20 32 Jul 3 15:47 Movies -> /Volumes/Mini/Users/m/Movies/
lrwxr-xr-x 1 503 20 33 Jul 3 15:50 Dropbox -> /Volumes/Mini/Users/m/Dropbox/
lrwxr-xr-x 1 503 20 35 Jul 30 14:33 Documents -> /Volumes/Mini/Users/m/Documents/

Everything else fits fine on a 128GB SSD. The Mini Volume is a 500GB 7200 rpm drive. Music/Photos, etc don't need SSD speeds.

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by nikhsub1

Tip: if your password to the tm hard drive is the same as the password to your computer bad things happen if running Mountain Lion.

I am on Snow Leopard here but thanks. I have already tried a disk Repair with no luck. There is plenty of space too.

[Small White Car]

Just had a thought, but I'd love to see apps become "Fusion aware" in the future. (Just like how now some apps take more advantage of multiple cores than they otherwise might.)

For example, I'd love to hear that something like Aperture could be made to keep this month's imported photos on the SSD no matter what and then move all others to the HD. Whereas the OS might think "oh, he only edited half of these photos, I'll move the rest to the HD" it would be great if an App could override that and say "nope, he told me keep ALL of this month's photos ready on the SSD for when he needs to work!"

[bushido]

upgraded my 2009 mbp with an SSD & 8 GB of ram a while ago, it feels like a completely new machine

[Marx55]

Bring the Fusion Drive with SSD & 7200 RPM HD.

[Rocketman]

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

[wlossw]

For everyone that is complaining about the fusion and 7200rpm HD... I think you guys are missing the point. You won't notice a major difference in this setup. All your writes are going to the ssd buffer first and the files you read regularly like apps, the os and dat files will be on the SSD anyway. Putting a 7200rpm drive would offer little real world performance increase for the average user. If you want faster speeds just buy a bigger SSD and forget about fusion. You can always add a thunderbolt external drive if you need the extra storage anyway.

[leo.andres.21]

Is this possible if I put a new SSD in the OD bay? in a 2011 macbook pro?

[kajakfahrer]

Amazing Speed, gorgeous mac. I will order three at one.

[Krazy Bill]

Breaking news: SSD's boot faster than conventional drives!

[ChrisCW11]

As usually this option is considerably more expensive then necessary, at nearly 1/2 - 1/3 the cost of a Mac Mini, and given what a Mac Mini is usually intended for, the upgrade cost is ridiculous.

Fusion drives may make more sense in the new iMac's and Mac Pro's, but as an upgrade for Mac Mini's they are just not worth it.

[rtrueman]

It doesn't seem like this would be a difficult task. Simply charge more for a larger SSD and use it in a Fusion configuration. Does this make sense or is a 128GB ssd big enough? I mean it wasn't that long ago that we only had HDs. It's not like they're super slow.

I do love my SSD + HD in my MBP, although I'm one that doesn't mind the manual moving of files and creating symlinks. All good stuff. It's strange that Apple doesn't offer this configuration. Why not offer Fusions AND an option to have both SSD and HD without Fusion. Doesn't that make sense? Maybe it's a SKU issue. Hopefully, there will be a solution.

Rob

[aplnub]

Anyone know how to make one of these yet? Do I just put in an SSD drive with a MacSales second bay option and Raid it?

Is anyone selling these type of drives yet?

[ghostface147]

Originally Posted by Amazing Iceman

SSDs are cheap now, running for about $100 for a 128GB or about $200 for a 250 GB.(

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

[iChrist]

.

I think we can now see that the new Fusion Mini is the new Pro machine that Tim was talking about. Well, I mean, it beats the Pro machine they are trying to sell now.

[Asclepio]

wow 5400 vs ssd what a great review!

[scottsjack]

Originally Posted by ghostface147

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

Exactly. The 750GB WD Black HDD on my mini typically runs at about 450GB if I don't overload it with pictures and Aperture libraries. A 750GB SSD would be just about right for that file size. The 480GB or 512GB are not big enough.

[SeniorGato1]

Originally Posted by scottganderson

Any insight into why the Fusion Drive is not available as a BTO option in the low-end 2.5 GHz i5 Mac mini?

Apple Greed. Fusion drive is a software trick.

[Tymmz]

i remember a rumour from a few years back when some guy predicted apple will use 2 HDDs in the future.

I'm pretty sure this technology was in the works for quite some time.

Faith restored!

[dashiel]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

Just had a thought, but I'd love to see apps become "Fusion aware" in the future. (Just like how now some apps take more advantage of multiple cores than they otherwise might.)

For example, I'd love to hear that something like Aperture could be made to keep this month's imported photos on the SSD no matter what and then move all others to the HD. Whereas the OS might think "oh, he only edited half of these photos, I'll move the rest to the HD" it would be great if an App could override that and say "nope, he told me keep ALL of this month's photos ready on the SSD for when he needs to work!"

According to Lee over at Ars Fusion is a block based tiering set-up, meaning what you are asking for is likely happening. Remember this isn’t a caching scheme, this is two hard drives acting as a single volume. OS X already moves files around on your disk based on how frequently they’re accessed. This takes that concept to the next level.

[cycomiko]

Originally Posted by dashiel

Typically the high-end iMac comes with a 7200RPM drive. I don’t know if the 2012 model will, though with Fusion it seems moot. As far as the cost it seems perfectly reasonable for an enterprise grade tiering solution. Certainly 200 quid is less costly than my time in creating a Fusion Drive.

The cynical side of me would say apple includes godawful 5400rpm drives in its base set of products to drive people up the value chain into higher margin upgrades or products. Like the option for this combo drive in only the core i7 mini.

[mslide]

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.

It's still pathetic that most Apple computers ship with a spinning HD as standard. SSDs should be standard in everything now.

[milbournosphere]

Here's some another perspective. Barefeats did some performance testing with the "Mac Pro" fusion drive method that was reported on by MacRumors a while ago. He found that it matched Apple's factory FusionDrive speeds for reads, and soundly beat it for writes:

MP Fusion = "home grown" Fusion volume on the 2010 Mac Pro 6-core created using an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 120GB SSD mounted the Apricorn Velocity x2 PCIe card and a Hitachi 7K3000 2TB HDD connected to the HighPoint RocketCache x8 PCIe card
OWC SSD = OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 240GB SSD (upgrade to 2012 mini sold by OWC)
factory SSD = 2012 Mac mini with the Apple 256GB SSD CTO option
factory Fusion = 2012 Mac mini with the Apple Fusion 1TB drive CTO option
7K HDD = Hitachi 7K3000 7200rpm 2TB HDD connected to a 6Gb/s host adapter (to represent a typical fast 7K Hard Disk Drive)
factory HDD = Apple's factory 'stock' 5400 rpm 1TB HDD for the 2012 Mac mini Core i7

http://www.barefeats.com/hard158.html