Apple's New Fusion Drive Works on Older Macs

[deconstruct60]

The nice thing about this implementation is that one could "reconfigure" each part of the fusion drive as needed. For example, I could start off with a 128GB SSD and then switch it out for a 256GB later when I can afford it.

That may or may not buy you anything on most workloads.

It would make more sense if updating both sides. If going to 256GB SSSD when move to a 3-4TB HDD. If that capacity is being driven by much larger files or much large working set of files then yes... this is why more flexible that Hybrid drives.

But cranking up the cache ratio up to 20-50% isn't necessarily cost effective. The problems with HDDs is that the cache ratios are pathetically, ridiculously bad. That's what "race to the bottom" pricing often does.

2.5" drives suffer even more if the HDD density goes up much faster than the flash modules. (and flash modules with higher density have more problems with errors and wear. ) A 3.5" Hybrid perhaps not as much but so far vendors are skittish to make those.

 

[theBB]

I don't think that this part is true. In the presentation of the new iMac, the hard drive and SSD were in different physical locations. Most hybrid drives don't have nearly the storage capacity of the SSD part in Fusion Drive, it would make much more sense for Apple to implement a software solution that uses 2 standard drives. Especially since there are iMac models that only have 1 or the other.

Image

This makes it even more overpriced that Apple is asking for 128GB of SSD as a $250 upgrade, so that it gets combined with an already existing default 1TB hard disk into a Fusion Drive. OWC sells such SSDs at half price.

 

[MeFromHere]

It sounds like it. John Siracusa on the latest "Hypercritical" podcast spoke at length about how Fusion leverages CoreStorage and that this may very well have been a feature Apple wanted to announce at WWDC and ship with Mountain Lion at launch.

Because it is based on CoreStorage, it should be able to be run from the Terminal as Mr. Stein has done. However, it may very well be unstable and therefore why Apple is officially saying it cannot be done and is not supported via the GUI.

I don't have drives configured at the moment to test it, but the corestoreage terminal commands mentioned in the article are already present in Lion (10.7.5).

 

[smithrh]

Sadly, a lot of mis-information and mis-understanding in these thread comments, however I'm sure that the real picture will be clear to all within a couple of weeks, so I won't correct every third or fourth post in here.

In addition, Patrick Stein has apps on the App store - one of which I've used for a long time now, JollysFastVNC. It's a Mac VNC client, and it's perfect for what I use it for. Patrick was extremely fast on feedback and suggestions that I made - most of the time I'd have the improvement within a day or so.

So, yes, he's a real developer.

 

[tbrinkma]

You get to use Time Machine to restore your data from backup. lol

Apple's method of merging two drives in this fashion instead of just using the SSD as a persistent cache (like Intel's tech does) does sacrifice some reliability for speed.

Nit-pick: It doesn't sacrifice reliability. It sacrifices robustness. (Or at least that's the assumption. It's entirely possible (though unlikely) that the 'special sauce' might allow the individual drives to be read independently of one another by having the OS treat them as distinct drives at a lower level, while presenting them as a single drive at a higher level.

 

[topgunn]

I have a 2010 iMac at home with an internal 160GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. Needless to say, I know how I am spending my halloween. I am concerned about reliability and data integrity but I can assuage those concerns with nightly Super Duper backups to go with my standard Time Machine backups.

 

[macduke]

I've wondered for a few years why somebody didn't come up with something like this. I never felt that hybrid drives went far enough with their simple caching. When I bought my 2011 MBP with a 128GB SSD (back when they were so expensive to upgrade), I looked into an Optibay for installing another drive where the Superdrive was. But the logistics of managing files back and forth seemed to be a pain. I'd have to always move over my design or photography projects and then move them back when finished to get the most speed out of the SSD. This "Fusion Drive" system is intelligent and would handle that for me. But instead I just upgraded to a 2012 Retina with 512GB SSD and now I don't have any problems. I just move over big projects and photo libraries every couple months to my 2TB G-Drive, which is mirrored to my slow, cheap 2TB WD Elements drive using Carbon Copy Cloner for backups.

I'm glad that Apple solved this problem with software. It's what they're good at. Just wish it had come sooner.

 

[tbrinkma]

Becomes if two things are fused...

form a single entity

Your car is a single entity. It consists of hundreds of individual parts. IBM is a single entity. It consists of thousands of people, machines, structures, etc.

A single *entity* does not have to be a single *part* (though with some methods, such as welding, that does happen).

 

[lukarak]

YES!!!!! This was the first thing I thought after the announcement of Fusion Drive. OWC offers an SSD and adapter to fit into older iMacs in place of the Superdrive. My thought was: can I set this up as Fusion?

I contacted Apple about and the rep did not seem to think it was possible. I figured the problem might have to do with the 4GB "write cache", but apparently it is possible.

Now I wonder two things:

1) If any two drives work, then why note a Fusion setup with 256GB of SSD instead of 128GB?

2) Should I invest more money in beefing our two 2009 iMacs or simply look to upgrade them next year to something newer?

OWC charges 60 bucks for the adapter, you can get one on ebay for 15.

 

[ChrisA]

This sort of stuff is only for self-identifying s00pR Geek weirdos, and they are NOT Apple's preferred customer base.

Don't try this at home, or you will likely brick your new $2000 computer. It isn't worth the chance.

"bricking" a computer is very unlikely. The worst that would happen is that you'd have to recover the OS from a Time Machine backup.

I smart person doing this would first remove the current hard drive and put it away some safe place. This is the "backup". Then install a new HD and a new SSD. I mean, seriously you don't work on this without making AT LEAST TWO backup copies of your data.

 

[Penn Jennings]

Does anyone know if dualbooting Windows OS would reap the benefits of a Fusion Drive like OSX does? I mean would it be able to recognize the dual volumes as one and use them in a similar fashion, or is this just something that is managed by OSX on a software level?

If not, I assume Windows OS would just see the SSD and HDD as two seperate mounted volumes then, right?

Windows would not be under OS X's control so I would doubt it.

Yes, Windows would see 2 different drives.

One OS shuffling another OS on disk could be bad.

 

[tbrinkma]

What is new is that in addition to being able to create a RAID logical drive, you can now create a Fusion logical drive. Apple want to sell you a physical drive that has both the components needed in a single physical drive (hybrid). What this guy did was figure out that you can build your own physical drive (in this case an internal SSD and a USB HDD) and OS X will treat it the same as if it were a purchased hybrid drive.

So Apple is not selling any "Fusion Drives", they are selling hybrid drives that will be recognized as logical fusion drives.

No, Apple is selling discrete SSD & HDD drives paired up and configured as a "Fusion Drive". They are not selling a hybrid SSD/HDD drive. That said, I imagine it's possible that using a SSD & Hybrid pair might provide a tiny improvement in performance.

The hybrid drives on the market are traditional spinning-platter drives with a small amount of SSD storage which is used as a cache. The 'Fusion Drive' is a 2-disk JBOD array with some special sauce in the OS to give commonly accessed data special treatment by making sure it gets put on the faster (SSD) portion of the array.

 

[mweingar]

It's pretty straight forward

Is this a stable setup? The article is very technical and doesn't really say if a non-techie could make it work safely. I notice he isn't providing any script to automate the setup process.

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This too.

This is the command that does ALL the work, assuming you have the drives installed:

"diskutil cs create bla disk1 disk7"

Put that into your console and use the right disk numbers and that is the end of it.

The most complex part is ensuring you have two drives and what their numbers are. I am betting this will work with any two volumes as the command has been in OS X for some time. This is extending its functionality though. What is not clear is how it decides which drive is the fast one. Is it always the first drive in the array or is it smart enough to look at the information about the drives and determine which is the SSD?

 

[tbrinkma]

but useless to me. Please explain to me why I'm paying £99 more for a new iMac, which lacks an optical drive, has no user upgradable ram, no firewire port, the SD card slot is now on the back an annoyance, a much slower 5400RPM hard drive, the old ones where 7200 RPM all for the sake of thinness?

An optical drive is crucial to me in a busy month as I must burn 20-30 DVD's I shoot weddings etc. This iMac flies compared to my old '09 MacBook Pro, its shocking to see how slow Aperture actually was on it.

Its a desktop why does the new iMac need to be this thin? Way too much compromise for me. I'm so glad I settled for the last gen, I'm willing to bet that my stock basic 2011 iMac will easily beat the new basic end iMac at pretty much all tasks, especially the stuff I do. A laptop 5400RPM drive has laughable performance editing RAW files in Aperture from my DSLR, no matter how fast the CPU.

That 100 quid I would have wasted has gone straight towards my rowers one piece for Uni and also 32GB RAM for it in the near future xD

I've got no idea. You certainly don't seem to *want* one, so the idea that you're buying one anyway is a bit mind-boggling.

 

[Squeak825]

Best thing about this, if it is really true, is that when I buy my new iMac, instead of having to buy the 3TB Fusion drive option to give me headroom for data growth, I can now just order the 768GB SSD option.

Once I get close enough to hitting that limit (which I am close), I will just add a 1TB Thunderbolt drive, and fuse them together.

 

[manu chao]

It is a matter of semantics. I'd say it is "RAID-like" in that several drives are joined using software into one logical volume.

The difference is that is a "normal" RAID system one typically uses identical drives. Here we uses one HDD and one SDD and the "magic" is that when you do this Mac OS X will place the files you access the most on the faster drive.

It is not RAID-like in that in a RAID every bit is either on drive A or drive B, never on two different drives (except for mirrored RAIDs where every bit is always on both drives). In a RAID, the data are written the moment they the OS sends the save command, in this 'Fusion Drive' the data are shuffled around long after the save command was send.

Sure, if you want to use the word 'RAID-like' for every system that combines different physical media into one volume, you can do this. But then almost everything is RAID-like, eg, Amazon S3 is RAID-like.

 

[tbrinkma]

That would be a problem. The operating system assumes (quite reasonably) that any partition is either there and up and running, or it is not there. With that setup, you would have a partition that is half on your internal drive and half on the external SSD, so if you remove the SSD, you now have a partition that is only half there. That's asking for trouble.

It should be possible, if you have a single cage which presents multiple distinct disks to the OS, to put one together that way, though. (And that shouldn't be any more dangerous than having a *normal* drive used that way.)

 

[manu chao]

The following line in the MacRumors description makes me question whether this is a true Fusion setup or just a form of hybrid caching:

If all data gets always also written to the HDD, then it would be caching solution. But if some data only remains on the SSD than it is not a caching solution (caching means it is cached on a fast storage in addition to its permanent storage).

And what we know about Fusion drive, some data will stay only on the SSD. Thus this is, as described already by numerous people, a tiered storage.

 

[Nermal]

I bet it works with Ramdrives too, for more than 2x the speed of a Flashdrive.

Some testing would be in order before trying that; the impression I got is that after it's had time to analyse your usage patterns, Fusion Drive will keep data on the fastest drive. If that's RAM, then you'll lose that data on reboot!

 

[manu chao]

The article title says the Fusion Drive works in other Macs. That's not what the article is about. The article is about using two different drives that work LIKE a THE Fusion Drive because of the software.

Well, Fusion Drive is all software, so wherever software is working that achieves these results we have by definition a Fusion Drive.

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So it's Apple's poorly worded tech name, and the fact that I can select Fusion Drive instead of HDD, when it's already in every computer running 10.8.2, that has caused my misunderstanding.

Fusion Drive is the software tech. When I select "Fusion Drive" when configuring a MacMini what I am really selecting is a SDD and a HDD combo, not a physical item called a "Fusion Drive."

I'll rephrase my original statement, Apple misleading is misleading.

I don't know, after reading or hearing the first five sentences about 'Fusion Drive' it was crystal clear to me what it was. If you of course never progressed beyond the title of the slide named 'Fusion Drive' than one speculate all kinds of things.

 

[Dorv]

OK, obviously APPLE isn't using hybrid drives in ITS Fusion Drive solutions, but in the sense of this being a roll-your-own project, can a hybrid drive potentially utilize the software?

I've got a SSD and HDD in my MBP; I'd prefer to put back in my ODD for several reasons.

 

[Letni]

It is not RAID-like in that in a RAID every bit is either on drive A or drive B, never on two different drives (except for mirrored RAIDs where every bit is always on both drives). In a RAID, the data are written the moment they the OS sends the save command, in this 'Fusion Drive' the data are shuffled around long after the save command was send.

Sure, if you want to use the word 'RAID-like' for every system that combines different physical media into one volume, you can do this. But then almost everything is RAID-like, eg, Amazon S3 is RAID-like.

Fusion drive is actually an implementation of LVM (LOGICAL VOLUME MANAGEMENT) which has Storage Tiering capabilities.. RAID is a completely different beast as the IDEA behind raid (generally) it to provide redundancy against drive failure. Fusion drive, APPLE LVM (or really ANY LVM for that matter) generally is designed to sit at a layer ABOVE RAID protection.. Requiring drive protection to already to be pre-existing under the LVM.

For the fact that Fusion drive actually now involves 2 unprotected drives (which data volume - lv - cannot survive without both LVM members - the faster SSD and the slower HD), your data is now MORE SUSCEPTIBLE to loss given the chances of a drive failure with 2 drives involved is higher than one drive. I would not recommend this configuration (feature) unless you have a separate backup strategy (TimeMachine) in place, or until Apple allows actual RAID (R1,R5,R6) to be deployed under each Tier of the Fusion drive..

 

[manu chao]

Apple want to sell you a physical drive that has both the components needed in a single physical drive (hybrid). What this guy did was figure out that you can build your own physical drive (in this case an internal SSD and a USB HDD) and OS X will treat it the same as if it were a purchased hybrid drive.

So Apple is not selling any "Fusion Drives", they are selling hybrid drives that will be recognized as logical fusion drives.

Nope, Apple is not selling hybrid drives, they sell Macs which an SSD and a HDD plus the software (ie, OS X 10.8.2) to combine them.

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There's nothing to bet. Apple has stated that there is a separate SSD and HDD. The only question is the form factor the SSD takes, and so far, it looks like it's similar to the NAND flash modules in the MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros. Still, there shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't work with a standard SSD.

Yep, the only thing it needs is an SSD connected to SATA bus.

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The most likely scenario is that they are soldering SSD memory in and putting a separate HDD and creating a logical hybrid drive using the two separate controllers.

Well, so far, no Mac had soldered SSD memory. And all the images that Apple has shown of the new iMac so far indicate the same slot-type SSDs as in the MBA and rMBP.

 

[Cougarcat]

Someone who is braver than I with a Hackintosh needs to try this. I'd love to know if it'll just work with chameleon..or not.

 

[MatthewAMEL]

I hope it will work in a MacBook Pro with optibay.

I'm doing this as we speak to my 13" MBP with an OWC Data Doubler.

I'll post when (and if) it works.

As a side note, I also plan on installing Windows 7 in Boot Camp.