Worth the Wait on 5K Retina iMac Hard Drive

tangfish said:

Thoughts from anyone who follows these upgrade cycles closely? Speculation?

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The internal storage options are unlikely to change before the next refresh, which would likely be next fall.

tangfish said:

The only thing about it is the 3TB hard drive. It sure would be nice to have more space than that.

And yes, I have multiple external Thunderbolt drives, RAID, etc. etc. and they are great for backup but an at least 4TB internal drive would be fantastic.

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It boggles my mind to think that ANYONE would need anywhere close to 4TB of internal storage at any point in time. Are you creating a full fledged feature movie and editing it on your imac?

Unless you're moving the computer around and don't want to deal with externals, I'm curious to know why you'd prefer an internal drive over a Thunderbolt-connected drive. For all practical purposes, the performance is the same.

tangfish said:

Hi Y'all, apologies if this has been brought up before, but I am (like many) enamored with the new 5K Retina iMac. Definitely going gaga over that display.

I do a good amount of photo editing and so it would be a great upgrade for me (have an older 27" iMac and rMBP15).

The only thing about it is the 3TB hard drive. It sure would be nice to have more space than that. I was reading an article about the new iMac and it said that other than the display itself (a design and engineering feat, no doubt) not much of the internals changed.

So, that makes me wonder if they'll do a little refresh sometime soon with the option to upgrade to a larger internal HD.

And yes, I have multiple external Thunderbolt drives, RAID, etc. etc. and they are great for backup but an at least 4TB internal drive would be fantastic.

Thoughts from anyone who follows these upgrade cycles closely? Speculation?

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The read write speed on the 5k took a slight dip despite the better processor. The reason is that the pcie lanes are divided between the ports on the back and the 5k monitor needed more than that other screens, leaving only two lanes for the hard drive (making a bandwidth junky sad), for example, even the MBP uses four lanes for storage. Only two lanes limit the speed; so on the 5k, so external vs. internal shouldn't be much of a consideration.

Ledger: I'm guessing his external setups are slower than the internal drive would be. So he wants more playground room; to import more at a time on a project, or to have a timely one sitting there while he pushes a faster one though. 3TB is a lot when you already have external raid!


Also as far as update cycles go... does anyone else feel like we are reaching a slump through the Broadwell age (as far a desktop enthusiasts go) waiting on skylake.

Unless one is after the most minimalist system, I don't personally see a benefit to huge internal storage. For anything so important that you need 4+ TB of storage, you're going to want major backups - including potentially a mirrored RAID plus at least one if not two Time Machine backups.

I'd rather do that on easily accessible external drives.