The 768GB Flash Storage $1300 club

[tommy0614]

My question is for those of you who have installed Win 7 thru bootcamp on your stock 768 SSD Imac what are your boot times for Win 7?

 

[Htin]

I'm joining the club!

I ordered my iMac 27"


27-inch iMac
Configuration
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM-2X4GB
768GB Flash Storage
NVIDIAGeFrc GTX 680MX 2G GDDR5
MAGIC TRACKPAD
Apple WL Kybd+User's Guide-ZP
COUNTRY KIT-ZP

On the 1st of March and it says

Available to ship: 7- 10 business days
Delivers: 15/03/2013 - 20/03/2013 by Standard Shipping

 

[AidenL]

And mine was delivered today, after being ordered on the 25th February !

 

[kapalua12]

Joined the club! I hope I do not regret getting the 768 SSD. I love SSD's.
I'm probably going to sell my 2010 27" iMac i7, 12 GB RAM
Delivery April 2-4 Standard shipping.

27-inch iMac
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM-2X4GB
768GB Flash Storage
NVIDIAGeFrc GTX 680MX 2G GDDR5
APPLE MAGIC MOUSE
Apple WL Kybd (English)+UG
COUNTRY KIT

Now to search for a good price on RAM and to decide on how much to put in this beast.

 

[kurtster]

Just ordered mine today. Not my first Mac by any stretch, but first iMac.

Was actually planning to put my order in last month, but never got around to it due to travels and whatnot. Glad I was able to take advantage of the price drop.

iMac 27インチ

システム構成：

• 3.4GHzクアッドコアIntel Core i7（Turbo Boost使用時最大3.9GHz）
• 8GB 1,600MHZ DDR3 SDRAM - 2 x 4GB
• 768GBのフラッシュストレージ
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5
• Magic Trackpad
• Apple Keyboard (テンキー付き - JIS) + 製品マニュアル
• アクセサリキット

 

[kapalua12]

I have a 2010 1 TB Time Capsule backing up my "old" 2010 iMac i7

What do you guys recommend to back up my "on order" late 2012 iMac 3.4 i7, 768 GB SSD?

Are the newer Time Capsules any faster with respect to speed of WiFi signal transfer to the new iMac's?

 

[AppleNewton]

I have a 2010 1 TB Time Capsule backing up my "old" 2010 iMac i7

What do you guys recommend to back up my "on order" late 2012 iMac 3.4 i7, 768 GB SSD?

Are the newer Time Capsules any faster with respect to speed of WiFi signal transfer to the new iMac's?

They have an improved wi-fi antennas/range ... so nothing too drastic but minor updates and just as reliable.

 

[flynz4]

I have a 2010 1 TB Time Capsule backing up my "old" 2010 iMac i7

What do you guys recommend to back up my "on order" late 2012 iMac 3.4 i7, 768 GB SSD?

Are the newer Time Capsules any faster with respect to speed of WiFi signal transfer to the new iMac's?

Can you wire your iMac into your network? We use TC's, but we have the WiFi turned off... we only use them as hardwired TM destinations on the home network. We generally hardwire ethernet anything that doesn't move.

/Jim

 

[dandrewk]

I am a long time HDD sufferer. Sooo many times I've had those thing die suddenly and catastrophically, or worse - a slow, aggravating death. Then I got the first generation MacBook Air with SSD, and... wow! I vowed never again to own an HDD.

My mid 2010 iMac was experiencing one of those slow, painful HDD deaths. Sadly, the drive was NOT part of the recall. So I suffered with bouncing icons on my quick launch tray and an endless stream of spinning wheels. I waited for the 2012's to finally be announced, then had to wait several months more until they became available on the EPP store.

Initially, the SSD drives were out of my price range. $1300? - Too much! I would have to be content with a fusion drive. But the months it took for EPP pricing allowed for a convergence of factors - Apple dropped the SSD price, and I got a larger than expected tax refund. The cost difference between a 3 TB fusion drive and SSD, taking into account the EPP discount, was only $375. DOABLE!

I got the iMac last week, and... OMIGOD! Well, I'm sure most folks in this thread understand. . I did Black Magic tests and my jaw dropped when the dial pinned in the red zone. Quick Bench results showed a 10x improvement in read speeds (over my old iMac) and 6x in write speeds. EVERYTHING is wicked fast now, no waiting. Reboots? Two minutes or less. My eyes have been watering a lot.

Yesterday I did my first Carbon Copy Cloner backup of the main drive. Over 450gb. One hour, eight minutes! That says it all.

 

[ZMacintosh]

I waited for the 2012's to finally be announced, then had to wait several months more until they became available on the EPP store.

EPP Store? apple employee or Education store?



What are those with 768GB Flash drives doing for external drives? USB 3? Thunderbolt? Network Storage?

 

[dandrewk]

EPP Store? apple employee or Education store?



What are those with 768GB Flash drives doing for external drives? USB 3? Thunderbolt? Network Storage?

EPP is employee purchase plan. My wife works for Pixar and gets the full Apple employee discount.

I have a 3tb Lacie Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 drive. I ran QuickBench tests and found very little difference between the TB and USB 3.0 ports, at least on this drive. I also have a Toshiba USB 3.0 drive, which is about 25% slower than the LaCie TB drive.

Upshot - The thunderbolt is nice in that it doesn't take up a USB port. Otherwise, the cheaper USB 3.0 drive should suffice.

 

[flynz4]

What are those with 768GB Flash drives doing for external drives? USB 3? Thunderbolt? Network Storage?

8TB Promise Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt array. Configured as 4TB RAID 10. I also have some NAS boxes in the house, but they are rarely used.

/Jim

 

[hfg]

What are those with 768GB Flash drives doing for external drives? USB 3? Thunderbolt? Network Storage?

I use a Pegasus J4 with 4 ea. 1-TB 7200rpm 2.5" disk drives configured as a pair of 2-disk RAID-0 arrays. One 2-TB RAID is for archive data, music, and video files. The other is for a fast Time Machine backup DAS ... with another much larger NAS Synology in the basement serving as backup for all the desktop and laptop computers on the network.

The J4 is tiny, cool, and quiet!

-howard

 

[ZMacintosh]

EPP is employee purchase plan. My wife works for Pixar and gets the full Apple employee discount.

I have a 3tb Lacie Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 drive. I ran QuickBench tests and found very little difference between the TB and USB 3.0 ports, at least on this drive. I also have a Toshiba USB 3.0 drive, which is about 25% slower than the LaCie TB drive.

Upshot - The thunderbolt is nice in that it doesn't take up a USB port. Otherwise, the cheaper USB 3.0 drive should suffice.

How awesome, Pixar must be a dream job for some! I know a buddy of mine interviewed for them recently. Should find out if he got the job and the discount

8TB Promise Pegasus R4 Thunderbolt array. Configured as 4TB RAID 10. I also have some NAS boxes in the house, but they are rarely used.

/Jim

Funny enough was thinking of Promise TB set-up. Do you have a back-up of the Promise drives or is that your central storage/back-up?
Thanks!!

I use a Pegasus J4 with 4 ea. 1-TB 7200rpm 2.5" disk drives configured as a pair of 2-disk RAID-0 arrays. One 2-TB RAID is for archive data, music, and video files. The other is for a fast Time Machine backup DAS ... with another much larger NAS Synology in the basement serving as backup for all the desktop and laptop computers on the network.

The J4 is tiny, cool, and quiet!

-howard

Awesome, thanks for the info. that helps alot. and seems like Promise pegasus's are the way to go.
Do they come as 0GB BYO-Drive kits? or is it a better value to just get a completed set-up with drives included?

Thanks again. I'm thinking the SSD only iMac is the way to go....considering if the HDD goes bad, its harder to replace than the 2009-2011 (which are easy). Also if it fills up nowhere to upgrade as easily.
So having everything external if data grows keep adding larger drives and dont have data spanning all over the place.

 

[dandrewk]

How awesome, Pixar must be a dream job for some! I know a buddy of mine interviewed for them recently. Should find out if he got the job and the discount

Indeed. They/we also get the Disney employee discounts, which makes trips to Disneyland/World etc. a LOT cheaper.

Thanks again. I'm thinking the SSD only iMac is the way to go....considering if the HDD goes bad, its harder to replace than the 2009-2011 (which are easy). Also if it fills up nowhere to upgrade as easily.
So having everything external if data grows keep adding larger drives and dont have data spanning all over the place.

True that. Just make sure your external drives are fast and large, and that you set your backups (Time Machine, CCC/SuperDuper, CrashPlan etc.) to back up the important files on the external drives.

I transferred most of my data files to an external drive and ended up with less than 500gb on the SSD, still plenty of room for inevitable fat. Besides applications and supporting files, the biggest space hog is my Windows VM(Fusion) folder.

 

[ZMacintosh]

My next question is what files do you keep on the 768GB SSD? its quite a bit of space but not enough for music/photos/tv shows from itunes.

 

[flynz4]

Funny enough was thinking of Promise TB set-up. Do you have a back-up of the Promise drives or is that your central storage/back-up?
Thanks!!

My next question is what files do you keep on the 768GB SSD? its quite a bit of space but not enough for music/photos/tv shows from itunes.

Answering both quotes above:

My primary data (photos, movies, music, etc) is 1.5TB. In addition I have about 600GB of "original data"... which has already been imported into Aperture & iMovie/FCPX. That data could be lost with no problems... since it is already imported and redundant. I just keep it around for the hell of it.

My SSD is 768GB... and my 8TB Pegasus is configured as a 4TB RAID 10 array. Obviously, my 1.5 TB of primary data does not fit on my 768GB SSD.

So... at the macro level:

768GB SSD (315GB still available):

• OSX
• Apps
• User directories (minus media)
• Aperture 3 library
• DevonThink database

4 TB Pegasus R4 (2.46 TB still available)

• Itunes library
• Final Cut library
• Aperture library clone
• Original (pre-import) redundant media

Nightly at 3:30 am (I am almost always asleep by then)... I do a CCC clone of my Aperture library to my Pegasus R4. This allows me to move my Pegasus to a 2nd computer and continue working with all of my primary media even if my iMac went "tango uniform" (sorry... I am a pilot on the side.. google it if you want to know what the euphemism means). The clone generally completes in a few minutes. Then at 4:30, I do a complete CCC clone of my R4, to an inexpensive 3TB Thunderbolt Seagate GoFlex drive. That usually completes very quickly as well.

My primary backup is two-fold:

1. Local - 3TB Time Capsule (1.41 TB free)
2. Cloud - Crashplan+ (unlimited capacity - 1.5 TB backed up)

I also have a pair of 1.5 TB HDDs that are rotated, with one offsite 100% of the time. This is a manual (very undesirable) backup... which I perform immediately following major work in either Aperture or iMovie/Final Cut Pro X. On that, I have all my pictures and home generated movie content... my truly irreplaceable data. Hence... I still have my most valuable data even if my house burns down the same day that Crashplan goes out of business.

As indicated above, I currently have about 300GB of free space on my 768GB SSD. That will continue to decrease as my Aperture 3 library grows. I have not really started using FCPX in a significant way yet... but I do have a couple of big projects that I will start over the next few months. I really do not know if FCPX will benefit from having its data on the SSD vs the Pegasus R4. My SSD will not be large enough to hold my entire video editing library, but it is large enough to contain "working copies" of my FCPX work... if there is an advantage. For sure... completed FCPX projects will live on the Pegasus, not the SSD.

Hope this helps.

/Jim

 

[kuppii]

Man, I don't know.
The 128GB fusion drive SSD just seems to be not enough. I'm definitely going to install Bootcamp Windows 7, so I would split both the SSD and HDD in equal parts - natively, so I wouldn't use the fusion drive feature which isn't a problem for me.
But damn, I will just not be able to fit the system + all those different programs on 60 gigs, which definitely bugs me.

So the alternative is this freaking pricy 768GB SSD. Of course this would work fine and I wouldn't have any problem with using external drives for some extra media.
But is it worth the cost?

I would love to just install a 250GB or 320GB SSD on my own without Apple being all cheesy in adding their extra cash for putting that stuff up. But on the other side that doesn't seem to be it worth either, because I will not risk my warranty on such an overall very expensive machine.


So yeah.
I don't know, maybe one of you guys want to give me his or her opinion/advice on that matter? I would really appropriate it

Regard

 

[flynz4]

So yeah.
I don't know, maybe one of you guys want to give me his or her opinion/advice on that matter? I would really appropriate it

Regard

I plan to use this new iMac for 2-3 years... and then my wife will use it for the next 2-3 years. Hence, we will have it for about 5 years.

I assumed that if I went with 768GB SSD... my anxiety would last one month until I paid the next Visa card bill... at which time I would forget about it for perpetuity. However, if I didn't get the SSD... then it would bug me for years.

I was wrong. My anxiety disappeared long before the Visa bill even arrived.

/Jim

 

[hfg]

Man, I don't know.

I don't know, maybe one of you guys want to give me his or her opinion/advice on that matter? I would really appropriate it

Regard

I wouldn't try to split the 128GB SSD ... it is already on the small size.

The 768GB SSD option does make a very useable dual-boot system:

500GB for OS X
250GB for Windows

Then put your "big & slow stuff" such as music, videos, movies, archive docs, etc. on a NAS or external TB or USB3 hard drive (even a bus powered portable drive tucked up under the stand.

 

[richard13]

I'm only using like 170GB of the 1TB drive in my current iMac so for my new iMac I'll probably just get the 1TB Fusion Drive. But seeing all you guys jumping on the crazy expensive Flash Storage bandwagon is making me envious... and maybe a little excited to possibly do the same.

 

[AppleNewton]

I'm only using like 170GB of the 1TB drive in my current iMac so for my new iMac I'll probably just get the 1TB Fusion Drive. But seeing all you guys jumping on the crazy expensive Flash Storage bandwagon is making me envious... and maybe a little excited to possibly do the same.

It would have been nice to see a second SSD option with the 786GB SSD. there is a sata port unused and a secondary SSD in there would be ideal.

The main reason the 768GB SSD option is attractive, is the lack of mechanical parts internally, better storage upgrade paths externally and same speeds with Thunderbolt and great speeds with USB 3.

It makes sense from a perspective of the machine is not portable, so unlikely it needs much internal capacity and theres more than likely always going to be something connected to the back of the Mac regardless; Time Machine, additional storage, etc. Just wish a second SSD option was available.

 

[kapalua12]

Need advice on backup plan for new iMac

Well, the 768 GB SSD iMac should be delivered this week!

I currently have my 2010 1TB iMac on time machine backup to my 2010 time capsule via wireless. I'm also obviously using the WiFi for my 2010 iMac, iPhone, Macbook Pro, iPad and Macbook Air. I'm only backing up the iMac to the time capsule.

So with the new 768 GB iMac coming should I get a new larger time capsule like the 2 TB or 3 TB and also take advantage of it's somewhat better signal strength via WiFi as well as backup both iMacs to a new, larger capacity time capsule?

Or should I backup the new iMac via USB3 or Thunderbolt to an external wired hard drive separate from my current 1 TB time capsule and continue to use the WiFi for all computers without getting a new larger capacity time capsule??

What would you guys do?

 

[kurtster]

It would have been nice to see a second SSD option with the 786GB SSD. there is a sata port unused and a secondary SSD in there would be ideal.

Fortunately that sata port is available, and is accessible without too much fuss. In a year or so when SSD prices have come down even further, I might make use of it.

 

[dandrewk]

Well, the 768 GB SSD iMac should be delivered this week!

I currently have my 2010 1TB iMac on time machine backup to my 2010 time capsule via wireless. I'm also obviously using the WiFi for my 2010 iMac, iPhone, Macbook Pro, iPad and Macbook Air. I'm only backing up the iMac to the time capsule.

So with the new 768 GB iMac coming should I get a new larger time capsule like the 2 TB or 3 TB and also take advantage of it's somewhat better signal strength via WiFi as well as backup both iMacs to a new, larger capacity time capsule?

Or should I backup the new iMac via USB3 or Thunderbolt to an external wired hard drive separate from my current 1 TB time capsule and continue to use the WiFi for all computers without getting a new larger capacity time capsule??

What would you guys do?

The advantage of a huge USB/TB external drive is size and speed. Unless you are using TC as your router, it may be a better option. TM can backup to any drive.

You should also consider a cloning backup, SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cleaner. It took a little over an hour for my initial backup, and it's incremental from there. It's a good idea to have a full, working bootable backup.

To go full out, also consider cloud backup services such as Crash Plan. If a catastrophe hits, your house catches on fire or a thief makes off with your system, you would be happy to have an off site backup.