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

[emir]

Isn't the SSD component of fusion kept full all of time? Isn't that supposed to be bad for he SSD?

Also curious about this.

Jollyjinx said on his blog that he had a few kernel panics while playing with the fusion drive. This made me a little self-concious. Should i or should i not do it. Really having a difficulty deciding now since i've ordered my optibay.

 

[jpadhiyar]

Well, I think they made it all seem perfect now. Combining SSDs with traditional disks till they're phased out in... 5 years max?

 

[mogens]

Anyone getting this when selecting storage from the "about this mac" menu on your DIY Fusiondrive?
The "+flash storage", seems to be unique for the mac mini 2012 ?

 

[hfg]

My DIY Fusion drive on a 2011 Mac Mini simply reports it as an "740GB internal disk" (it is configured as a 240 GB SSD and a 500 GB hard disk).

Looks like the 2012 models which are offered with a Fusion drive have a version of "About This Mac" which recognizes the Fusion drive and includes a special "label" for the icon as well as a new version of Disk Utility to repair the Fusion drive. DIY Fusion drives probably won't gain these support file upgrades until the next update of OS X.

 

[mogens]

Hmm..seems like there's more to creating a fusiondrive than software. E.g. After booting with the alt key I get two identical volumens to chose from. Maybe special SSD firmware, guess we'll have to wait for the answers.

 

[hfg]

Hmm..seems like there's more to creating a fusiondrive than software. E.g. After booting with the alt key I get two identical volumens to chose from. Maybe special SSD firmware, guess we'll have to wait for the answers.

Sounds like something is wrong there, you should only see a single Fusion drive unless you have a recovery partition which will show up labeled as such.

I'm sorry mogens ... my error ... I have so many drives showing up on my test-bed MacPro that I had forgotten about the dual Fusion drive icons.

You are absolutely correct that a normal DIY Fusion drive shows up as 2 drive icons when alt-key booting. And, either one will boot correctly.

It will be interesting to see if anyone can figure out why ... and if it is possible to correct that difference with the standard distribution OS X.

 

[mogens]

I don't have a recovery partion since I set the size to 100%. Two volumes showing up starting with the alt key is "normal" using the DIY fusiondrive on older macs. Clicking one or the other takes you to the desktop.

 

[hfg]

I don't have a recovery partion since I set the size to 100%. Two volumes showing up starting with the alt key is "normal" using the DIY fusiondrive on older macs. Clicking one or the other takes you to the desktop.

I wonder if it would make a difference (or even be possible) if you started the DIY fusion join with drives which had no formatting on them, such as new blank drives, or drives configured by Disk Utility with no formatting?


-howard

 

[mogens]

Maybe you're right. That could explain why some mac mini 2012 fusion buyers have problems separating the two drives.

 

[milo]

I'll love to see the first one who get a corrupt file stuck in the middle of the two drives that can't be saved

No different than when a file is lost when a single drive fails. You run regular backups and restore after a failure.

That, and there has to be a way to get it to understand things like games. Lets say you have a rarely played game sitting somewhere on your computer. Chances are it'll be bumped to the HDD. When you do play it, expect horrible load times on that 5400 RPM drive.

For a rarely played game, that's exactly what I'd want it to do. Keeping little used data on SSD would be a terrible allocation of resources.

 

[roadbloc]

Hybrid drives have been around for a while. How is this new?

 

[BRyken]

Its completely different than a hybrid drive.

 

[AidenShaw]

Its completely different than a hybrid drive.

Actually, although the implementation is quite different, the end result is quite the same.

Of course, a hybrid drive can be used on any system with any OS without paying the Apple Tax.

Fusion™ is only supported on a few Apple-supplied configurations of the most recent systems and OS versions.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Hybrid drives have been around for a while. How is this new?

Do your own research and stop being lazy.

 

[mentaluproar]

Hybrid drives work like the cache on your CPU. It sometimes helps, but its not very clever and has no way of knowing what kind if data it is working with.

 

[gnasher729]

Well said!
For a company all about innovation and thinking different they said that optical drives are dead and obsolete... what about HDD?

How is replacing a 1 TB HDD with a 768 GB SSD drive that costs ten times more "innovative"?

 

[MaxPower72]

How is replacing a 1 TB HDD with a 768 GB SSD drive that costs ten times more "innovative"?

I wasn't addressing the cost issue but the "innovation" factor; since the development of HDDs in the late 50s by IBM we basically are still using a concept that is 50+ years old while in comparison, Optical Media, deemed dead by Apple, is a much younger technology and yet everybody agrees with the fact that if Apple said it it's Gospel....
The price is a rip off but that's what Apple charges on their website we all know that. By now they should have installed SSDs on any Mac instead of the crappy 5400 rpm HDD but apparently the gorgeous and flawed retina display is the next big thing that we all need at any cost... I would rather consider something like an SSD that can effectively improve the performance of the machine than a super high def screen for which most programs aren't ready yet and that actually burden the GPU with extra work....

 

[BRyken]

Actually, although the implementation is quite different, the end result is quite the same.

Of course, a hybrid drive can be used on any system with any OS without paying the Apple Tax.

Fusion™ is only supported on a few Apple-supplied configurations of the most recent systems and OS versions.

Right yea. Concept is the same, implementation is different (and better).

 

[subsonix]

I would rather consider something like an SSD that can effectively improve the performance of the machine than a super high def screen for which most programs aren't ready yet and that actually burden the GPU with xtra work.

You already have that option, buy a regular MBP and put down all money in between on a SSD. Don't really see what the issue is here.

 

[AidenShaw]

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.

Hmmm... Perhaps these numbers will help you understand....

• $379.99 - OCZ Agility 4 512G 2.5" 512GB
• $59.99 - TOSHIBA MQ01ABD050 2.5" 500 GB

(Look at Newegg, sort 500 GB drives for "lowest price")

 

[Renzatic]

Its completely different than a hybrid drive.

Actually, it's a similar idea implemented in reverse.

In old hybrid drives, you have a small amount of SSD space that's used to cache regularly accessed data. Like the OS would boot of it, as would a few of your commonly used programs. Everything else is shunted to the HDD.

With a fusion drive, you have a moderately sized SSD that everything is written to first, and moved over to the HDD when the SSD reaches full capacity.

A hybrid drive sounds like it'd work better in practice, but I haven't ever heard many good things about it. The fusion drive, which seems like a sloppier implementation to me, seems to work beautifully according to everything I've read about it. It gives you the SSD boost, without having to worry about managing two disks.

The only problem I could see with it is if you want to run something off the SSD, but it's stuck at the back of the drive. How would you give certain programs access without having to uninstall a bunch of stuff?

 

[AidenShaw]

Right yea. Concept is the same, implementation is different (and better).

Is proprietary lock-in better? (the hybrid drive would accelerate your dual-boot Windows partitions - the Fusion™ drive won't, and makes dual booting a PITA)

The word "better" means that it's subjective - and in many situations it's not "better".

The plants are beautiful inside the walled garden, aren't they?

 

[subsonix]

Actually, it's a similar idea implemented in reverse.

In old hybrid drives, you have a small amount of SSD space that's used to cache regularly accessed data. Like the OS would boot of it, as would a few of your commonly used programs.

A file cache works on a block level, your boot example would only work if you booted very recently so that all booting related files are still in the cache. Assuming that the cache is not full you would get SSD write speeds on small chunks of data that can comfortably fit in the cache, you would get SSD read speeds if the data is currently in the cache, which it will only be if you recently read or wrote it.

 

[BRyken]

Is proprietary lock-in better? (the hybrid drive would accelerate your dual-boot Windows partitions - the Fusion™ drive won't, and makes dual booting a PITA)

The word "better" means that it's subjective - and in many situations it's not "better".

The plants are beautiful inside the walled garden, aren't they?

Well sure. IMO Fusion is better than Hybrid because I don't dual boot therefore Fusion will always work.

For people that dual boot, consider this when buying Fusion, or just wait until Microsoft copies this idea from Apple...

 

[AidenShaw]

Right yea. Concept is the same, implementation is different (and better).

Is proprietary lock-in better? (the hybrid drive would accelerate your dual-boot Windows partitions - the Fusion™ drive won't, and makes dual booting a PITA)

The word "better" means that it's subjective - and in many situations it's not "better".

The plants are beautiful inside the walled garden, aren't they?

In old hybrid drives, you have a small amount of SSD space that's used to cache regularly accessed data.

Those "old" drives are the latest tech .

Like the OS would boot of it,

"Boot time" is really a nonsense measurement in this day and age.

My Win7 x64 laptop might reboot once or twice a month - it's usually just going between sleep and awake. Do I care if it takes one minute or two minutes to reboot - no!

Don't waste SSD space on files that might be accessed once or twice a month - let the drive decide how to make the best use of the SSD cache.

A hybrid drive sounds like it'd work better in practice, but I haven't ever heard many good things about it.

When I got my latest work laptop, I bought a Momentus XT 750 GB with my own money, and put the company drive in the static bag in a drawer.

I've bought Momentus XT 500 GB drives for two of my other laptops.

Money well spent - you've now heard "good things" about hybrid drives.

(I edited and extended my post, and several comments were made while doing that....)