I believe that the Mac OS is installed on the Fusion Drive, so when I used Time Machine, would this backup the OS, data, applications that were resident on the Fusion Drive or would Time Machine only backup whatever were on the hard drive?
Also. I'm planning on installing Parallels Desktop 8 and Windows 7 64 bit. Would the Fusion Drive give me the same benefits (faster access etc that I would see whilst using the Mac OS side) when I was using Parallels Desktop 8 and Windows 7?
Heard the Fusion drive doesn't work in Windows so pointless if you're going that route.
Time Machine will backup the entire Fusion drive (unless you specify exceptions), and it will restore the full Fusion drive. There is no longer the identity of distinct SSD and Hard Disk ... just the Fusion drive.
Fusion will work great with Parallels or VMware virtual Windows machines.
Fusion will not be used with a bootable Windows (BootCamp) installation as the Fusion software is a part of OS X, and Windows doesn't have any such functionality.
The Fusion Drive is 128gb in size. I was wondering, once the Fusion drive is full, any other Applications I would be installing would then go on the hard drive. So if for example I had an Application on the Fusion Drive that I'd either not used for a while or a newly installed Application that I'd began using more than some other Application that was resident on the Fusion Drive. Would this Application then be transferred to the Fusion Drive, and an older lesser used Application would then be moved to the hard drive?
Thanks
Just a few other questions
I've read that Fusion Drive keeps 4gb free for a write buffer.
With this in mind. If I was copying something from say an external hard drive to the iMac, perhaps whatever I was copying was either below 4gb and another time it might be greater than 4gb. Whatever it was that I was copying over, would this be put onto the Fusion Drive whilst the copy was taking place(and in doing this, speed the copying process up considerably), and then after copying had completed, would the Fusion Drive then move it over to the hard drive?
Sort of. Fusion is actually a bit more specific than that. It doesnt deal on a "per file" or "per app" basis but rather 128Kb blocks of data. If a 128Kb block of data is used frequently, its moved onto the SSD and a less frequently used block is moved onto the HDD. An app would be made up of tens of thousands of such blocks, so whatever little bits of an app you use alot will be moved onto the SSD. Its like on a video game, if you dont go to a certain level much then that level will be on the HDD while the levels you use frequently will be on the SSD. Get it?
Just a few other questions
I'm planning on maybe using Carbon Copy Cloner in addition to Time Machine.
I'm wondering if CCC will still be able to provide a bootable backup with an external hard drive, from a Mac that has a Fusion Drive installed, but then again if the Fusion Drive and hard drive are seen as one, then it should, but I'm not 100 percent sure on this?
I've read that Fusion Drive keeps 4gb free for a write buffer.
With this in mind. If I was copying something from say an external hard drive to the iMac, perhaps whatever I was copying was either below 4gb and another time it might be greater than 4gb. Whatever it was that I was copying over, would this be put onto the Fusion Drive whilst the copy was taking place(and in doing this, speed the copying process up considerably), and then after copying had completed, would the Fusion Drive then move it over to the hard drive?
I'm aware of that, but I wanted to ask the question based on my uses and Applications I would be using
Quick note - the Fusion drive is the whole drive, fast and slow. SSD is the fast bit of the Fusion drive, and the HDD is the slow bit. SO everythings on the fusion drive, some bits are on the fast SSD some on the slow HDD.
Sort of. Fusion is actually a bit more specific than that. It doesnt deal on a "per file" or "per app" basis but rather 128Kb blocks of data. If a 128Kb block of data is used frequently, its moved onto the SSD and a less frequently used block is moved onto the HDD. An app would be made up of tens of thousands of such blocks, so whatever little bits of an app you use alot will be moved onto the SSD. Its like on a video game, if you dont go to a certain level much then that level will be on the HDD while the levels you use frequently will be on the SSD. Get it?
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Right, so say your SSD is full. If you copy a 3Gb file onto the fusion drive, it will copy it onto the SSDs write buffer at high speed. Then, when your system is idle, it will begin transferring 3Gb of infrequently used data from the SSD to the HDD to maintain the 4Gb buffer.
If you copied a 6Gb file onto your drive, 4Gb would be written onto the SSD at high speed and then it would smoothly transition to putting the remaining 2Gb on the HDD at slower speed. It would then shuffle 4Gb off your SSD onto your HDD to maintain the buffer.
CCC will work fine to clone your Fusion drive to a bootable external drive because your Fusion just appears as one big drive. You do not have to worry at all about "where" things are stored, the operating system will manage that completely for you. Just treat it as one big drive.
I think you are the perfect user for which Fusion was intended. Give it a try!
-howard
Thanks very much for the help, its much appreciated.
With the help of yourself, Yougotcarved and others, I'm starting to understand the Fusion Drive and how it works. Thanks again.
I'm looking forward to getting my iMac (which will be February or March) and I'm pretty much certain I'll go with the Fusion Drive option now. It will be nice to replace my 5 year old Windows Vista machine, I can imagine the difference between that and the iMac will be like night and day.
So did u get it with fusion ? N how us it?
So how Fusion drive works in this situation:
I have almost 500 GB used storage. I want to install let say Starcraft 2 that i will use every day. Will starcraft 2 files be put on SSD and remove other files to HDD or starcraft 2 even i will use it a lot will remain on the HDD?