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Connecting an SSD to iMac

joe-h2o said:
I have the basic 120GB one and it suits me just fine. I don't run it as a fusion drive, it's a separate partition that has my OS X install and apps on it. For my current needs it is more than adequate since I keep my iTunes library on a high speed SD card that lives permanently in the rear SD card slot of the iMac (that location is simply not suited to regular card access and I already have an external usb reader for my camera's cards).

My install plus apps and the bulk of my day to day work lives on that SSD and it happily sits with more than 40 GB free. I am looking to upgrade at some point in the future to a larger drive, especially since I'm thinking of migrating the windows partition to it (that runs off the internal HD). All other large files that are rarely accessed, or where access time doesn't matter just live on that internal HD and the whole thing is backed up via time machine to an external USB3 drive.

I can highly recommend the LaCie rugged SSD - it's small, it's orange (but that is easy to remove without damaging it if you don't like that) and bus-powered, and the included thunderbolt cable is the ideal length.

I have TRIM support working just fine with it (as you'd expect on the TB bus), and the access speeds are near-native for a SATA3 SSD, which is what is inside the case.
Click to expand...

Great, thank you for the information.

I was thinking of trying a Fusion Drive, but TBH, I want more than the 128GB of flash storage Apple offer. I figured I could get the best of both worlds by using an external TB SSD as the boot drive. I'm happy to hear that I should get near-SATA3 speeds over TB.

I will probably purchase the 256GB Lacie rugged SSD, but still not sure on whether the Seagate TB adaptor paired with a 500GB Samsung EVO will work better. I must say that I do prefer the more "complete" look of the Lacie drive (although it will be hidden in the cable management tray anyway).
 
You can use Lacie Rugged 120 to make a Fusion drive, but the Sandisk U100 SSD that fits into is very very bad in write performance when the SSD disk is almost full.
I have used in as FD on my Mac, but I get very bad perf when writing (20-30Mb/s).
I have replaced it into the Lacie enclosure by a Samsung EVO that works great in FD configuration.
 
rbart said:
You can use Lacie Rugged 120 to make a Fusion drive, but the Sandisk U100 SSD that fits into is very very bad in write performance when the SSD disk is almost full.
I have used in as FD on my Mac, but I get very bad perf when writing (20-30Mb/s).
I have replaced it into the Lacie enclosure by a Samsung EVO that works great in FD configuration.
Click to expand...

Thanks, thats good to know.

I won't be making a FD out of the Lacie rugged SSD, though. I'll be using it purely as a boot drive with all of my apps. Will I still see great performance using the SanDisk U100 in this respect?
 
joe-h2o said:
This is the SSD inside my LaCie Rugged: a Micron C400

http://ssds.findthebest.com/l/156/Micron-RealSSD-C400-128GB-MTFDDAC128MAM-1J1

I haven't noticed any particular slowdown. It's currently sitting with 19 GB free space. I just ran a bench on it and am getting 190-200 MB/s write and 380-385 MB/s read.

This is after over a year of use (It's been a boot drive since December 2012) including times when it has been pretty full.
Click to expand...

This one is really better.
But now, most Lacie Rugged include a Sandisk U100 SSD which is one of the worst SSD for writing (in some tests, it's like a USB2 key !).
You can look for Sandisk U100 reviews.
Lucky people have a Crucial into their rugged.
This one is fast.
The Sandisk U100 can be correct if you use it as boot drive and don't write to much on it. Be careful, keep enough free space.
 
Boot drive vs Fusion

I have an early 2014 machine (that I ordered through a rewards program and could not customize to fusion). Instead, I bought a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro to works a boot drive via USB enclosure from OWC. At the last second, I decided to do a DIY Fusion. Performance is good and cpu is snappy, but for some reason it doesn't benchmark very well.

So my question is - what are the arguments for fusion and what are the arguments for a pure boot drive. Wondering if speeds would be faster via boot drive only vs fusion.

Any thoughts?
 
[[ So my question is - what are the arguments for fusion and what are the arguments for a pure boot drive. Wondering if speeds would be faster via boot drive only vs fusion. ]]

If you "un-fuse" your current setup, and let the external SSD run "as a standalone SSD drive", you may be more pleased with the speed difference...
 
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