Don't you read this site ?
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/07/1...ftermarket-ssd-upgrades-for-2012-macbook-air/
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Apple's New 'Fusion Drive' Not a Typical Hybrid Drive
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Don't you read this site ?
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/07/1...ftermarket-ssd-upgrades-for-2012-macbook-air/
Ah you mean main memory. Yes, it's soldered on ! Have to sell your system and buy another one. 8^(
We are talking about SSD here !
I was talking about both. My point was, you can see where this is all heading. Eventually the end user won't be able to upgrade anything on their own, and be forced into Apple's "upgrade" pricing which amounts to nothing more than highway robbery.
That's not FUD. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Why would Apple use FUD on itself ?
Of course you won't magically get 250GB out of 128GB of SSD. The gain would be calculated based on all your use cases averaged out. Some of your iPhoto access will be faster, some will remain HDD speed. After you close iPhoto and use other apps, the behavior will change again. Frequently used system files will also likely be on the SSD. So the speedup may be there already.
Not really.
Not reliability. There is no data mirroring here. But faster is a good possibility simply because your most used files are on the SSD. Most likely frequently used system files, plus some user files.
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We shall see ! If they swing too far, users will revolt.
Having gotten burnt by the failed 1TB drives in previous models, I specifically bought an SSD drive to avoid such failure in the future. Eventually that mechanical part will fail, its only a matter of time. Then you have what, a wasted SSD/magnetic drive as a paper weight. No thanks.
Interesting. Sounds like an extension of the CPU-to-cache-memory concept in some general ways. To make things run faster, the CPU doesn't store all data to RAM over the system memory bus. It uses much faster on-board memory, which also happens to be much more expensive than ordinary DRAM. Fusion drive (and other more primitive hybrid SSD - HDD technologies) is an extension of that concept to the file system.
Not the non-Retina MacBook Pro? The Retina MB Pros are all-SSD, but why not offer Fusion in the base MB Pros?
1) Where'd you get "affordable"? No prices have been announced, but since it's Apple, they will make somehow sure that this drive costs more than an SSD and an HDD combined.
2) We're pretty far into that transition already. Good SSDs like the Samsung 830 have come down a lot in price to the point where mere mortals can pick one up without eating cup noodles for the rest of the month. It's just that Apple wants 4 times the street price for one. They're holding back the transition by pricing a commodity item like it was revolutionary tech obtained from aliens.
Nope. 3rd party drives can replace the failed HDD in a Fusion drive.
MacRumors said:
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Like you said: "No prices have been announced, ..."
So save your whining until they have been announced. M'kay?
As I read it, it's not a cache - the two drives are simply "fused" into one larger virtual drive. Access to some of the data is faster than to other parts of the data, but all of it is main storage - there is no replication from a higher level as in a cache. AMD processor cache presumably replicates data from main memory (unless there's some allocate-in-cache scheme for short-lived data).
It looks like an interesting technical solution to the problem of large drives with fast access at low cost. I'd hesitate to say that something similar has never been done before, though!
As an aside, I recently discovered an unexpected problem with SSD when my MBA took a coffee bath. The SSD was unrecoverable, since the chips were damaged. A disk, being sealed, could probably have been recovered. Luckily I had good backups...
Yeah, let's wait for the announcement, because we have noooooooo way of predicting that Apple's BTO pricing will follow the usual pattern. Maybe THIS time there will be a sudden shift in strategy? Maybe if you look out the window, THIS time there will be blue fairies performing a choreographed dance in the sky?
That would be true if both drives have the same failure rate. However, SSDs have a much lower mean-time-between-failures than HDDs. The HDD may even have a lower failure rate than usual (e.g. if it is usually powered down because most access is to the SSD).
So the Fusion drive failure rate is likely to be close to the HDD failure rate, or possibly much better. Doesn't sound like something to worry about!
Wonder if the Mac Mini still uses 2x2.5" SATA drives, or if the Solid State is the blade style from MBA/rMBP.
What's 4 times the street price ?
I thought the regular MacBook Pro still take aftermarket SSD ?
The thinner MacBooks may be harder to upgrade after the fact. That's probably why Apple keeps the regular MBP around for people who treasure upgradability. I went for MBA because I don't usually upgrade my laptop after I custom build it.
The Fusion Drive should have a premium over SSD + HDD. The question is how much.
How safe is this for the data ?
It sounds like a raid 0 boot disk.
If either SSD or HDD fails , you lose all data.
So you have 2 times the risk of data loss compared to a normal use of a HDD/SSD.
I know this , and most people know here aswell.
But most computer users don't.
And if they dont have a backup , they're crewed.
It sounds like a raid 0 boot disk.
If either SSD or HDD fails , you lose all data.
So you have 2 times the risk of data loss compared to a normal use of a HDD/SSD.
I know this , and most people know here aswell.
But most computer users don't.
And if they dont have a backup , they're crewed.
This is actually not needed if apple went with 256GB as standard
Thank you for that completely uneducated comment, i'll remember that when 256GB isn't enough as I fill my 2TB drive with video footage off my GoPro's.
Indeed, the point that interested me was the comment on page 1 that it also uses the SSD for writes and later transfers them to the spindle drives. We use something similar now in servers called Flashcache ( http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=388112370932 ) which was developed by Facebook and then opensourced. In short we may have a 12TB array in our server, and we throw in a 256GB SSD. Initial reads of the data on the array are fed to the application, and also written to the SSD. Anyone that needs that data again it is loaded off the SSD freeing up the array. Data that is written is first written to the SSD, and then casually written back to the array. As an example, it reduces our reads on some arrays by up to 80%, once the drive is full it clears room for new data based on the oldest sitting data on the drive. This setup is however still just a cache and not intelligent like Apple's fusion drive setup, which is similar yet more intelligent.
Data is growing, spindle drives are struggling to keep up, flash drives are struggling even more so to keep up and remain cost effective. This is probably going to be a standard for quite a few years to come until memory for flash storage both grows and shrinks in price significantly.
Read the last 2 pages. It is completely different from RAID.
SSD and HDD can be replaced separately. You don't lose all the data unless the entire disk is toasted.
But you should do backup nonetheless.
I picked up a Samsung 830 256GB last week for 1500 SEK, which translated to USD minus VAT would be something like 170 bucks. Samsung 830 is the exact same 256GB SSD that Apple will put in the iMac (the current one, not the razor thin one that's out in December) if you ask them to, but they want 6000 SEK for it. Last time I checked, 4x1500 = 6000. Pretty much all their RAM and storage options cost 3x or 4x the aftermarket price. This wasn't a problem before, more like a source for a good laugh or two, but now that they've started using proprietary SSD and RAM in laptops it's only a question of time before they start doing that on iMac (to make it even thinner than the new razor thin one), and then we HAVE to pay for their comically overpriced options if we want to go beyond the baseline config.
Or PR BS, suit yourself.
Then you realise the statement was wrong.
You claim consumer grade SSD is more reliable and has more write cycles? Anything to back that up?
Um, yes. That's why I said if they sold a packaged unit containing the SSD and HDD in one enclosure, I'd happily buy one, or more. That is what Fusion Drive is: SSD + HDD, with the SSD acting like a giant RAM cache for the HDD via underlying low-level drivers. It's brilliant stuff.
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Part of the innovation is in the software/hardware that makes it act as one discrete unit, keeping most-used data on the SSD until space is needed, and moving apps back onto the SSD if you change your usage patterns. Sure, you could do all that by hand with a lot of work, but the point is that you don't have to think about it or manually copy files back and forth. It just works.
Sounds interesting! But technically, if you know which files you use often, can't you just get an SSD and an HDD, and then do the same thing, with two logical volumes?
Apps and the OS don't take up much space, so you could simply put the entire OS and all your Apps on the SSD, and always store your media (photos, music) on the HDD. That way, you'd always know what is where, and why certain things are fast while others are slow. Would that pretty much be like having a Fusion Drive, but without the automatic file swapping?
(I'm asking as I want to swap my MBP's CD drive to an SSD)
Apps and the OS don't take up much space, so you could simply put the entire OS and all your Apps on the SSD, and always store your media (photos, music) on the HDD. That way, you'd always know what is where, and why certain things are fast while others are slow. Would that pretty much be like having a Fusion Drive, but without the automatic file swapping?
(I'm asking as I want to swap my MBP's CD drive to an SSD)
The thinner Macs are harder and more expensive to upgrade. The regular MacBook Pro should be more serviceable, no ? If you don't like the expensive upgrade, then your options are to get the non-Retina MBP, or don't buy. If fewer people buy the thinner Macs, then Apple will refocus on the more expandable Macs.
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