An SSD of size comparable to a Fusion drive would cost more than most of the systems they're being installed in. The Fusion isn't going anywhere.
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Drive Failed, considering hybrid - what to look out for?
- Thread starter BradHatter
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Fusion drives aren't going anywhere, and neither are HDDs.
As an example, a client has approximately 200 DVDs that are about 10 years old and the DVDs are beginning to fail. Their options are SSDs, HDDs, or more DVDs. SSDs are out of the question because of the shear cost. The customer wants to avoid more DVDs because time has proven them to be unreliable. A Fusion drive or hybrid drive could be options, but the speed isn't that important. The solution has been to transfer the video media to HDD and then use a Mac Mini as essentially a video server.
As an interesting side note, DVD quality really does (or did) matter. All of the DVDs that were Philips brand are now failing. I'd guess about a 90% failure rate. The Memorex DVDs remain intact and useable, with probably a 10% failure rate. There were some others used but I'm not sure what the brand is, and they're failing as well like the Philips. At one time there was a brand of ultra high reliability DVDs made by someone, I think it was a subsidiary of Panasonic, but the name fails me right now. I looked into them and they've now stopped production. There is also another super-high reliability DVD maker out there whose name once again fails me but the cost is relatively high, but it's a fairly new product.
As I explained to the customer, the real problem with DVDs, even if they're of true archive quality is the optical nature of the product itself. A standard hard drive uses electromagnet signals to convey information in an essentially sealed chamber. DVDs get exposed to the environment including dust and the side effects of human handling, which can interfere, distort, or even block the laser from reading the signal properly. Although an archive quality DVD may last a long time, the fact is that if the light path between the media surface and the laser itself is obstructed by dust, for example, that section of the DVD simply won't get read. For an archival quality DVD, cleaning the DVD or even just blowing dust off of it may clear the problem, but it will always continue to be a problem. SSDs and HDDs will not have these problems.
The lifespan of an SSD for long term storage still seems to be an unknown.
As an example, a client has approximately 200 DVDs that are about 10 years old and the DVDs are beginning to fail. Their options are SSDs, HDDs, or more DVDs. SSDs are out of the question because of the shear cost. The customer wants to avoid more DVDs because time has proven them to be unreliable. A Fusion drive or hybrid drive could be options, but the speed isn't that important. The solution has been to transfer the video media to HDD and then use a Mac Mini as essentially a video server.
As an interesting side note, DVD quality really does (or did) matter. All of the DVDs that were Philips brand are now failing. I'd guess about a 90% failure rate. The Memorex DVDs remain intact and useable, with probably a 10% failure rate. There were some others used but I'm not sure what the brand is, and they're failing as well like the Philips. At one time there was a brand of ultra high reliability DVDs made by someone, I think it was a subsidiary of Panasonic, but the name fails me right now. I looked into them and they've now stopped production. There is also another super-high reliability DVD maker out there whose name once again fails me but the cost is relatively high, but it's a fairly new product.
As I explained to the customer, the real problem with DVDs, even if they're of true archive quality is the optical nature of the product itself. A standard hard drive uses electromagnet signals to convey information in an essentially sealed chamber. DVDs get exposed to the environment including dust and the side effects of human handling, which can interfere, distort, or even block the laser from reading the signal properly. Although an archive quality DVD may last a long time, the fact is that if the light path between the media surface and the laser itself is obstructed by dust, for example, that section of the DVD simply won't get read. For an archival quality DVD, cleaning the DVD or even just blowing dust off of it may clear the problem, but it will always continue to be a problem. SSDs and HDDs will not have these problems.
The lifespan of an SSD for long term storage still seems to be an unknown.
But bear in mind the running life of an HDD is typically 3-6yrs so having a single copy is still a bad idea - agree that DVD/CD lifespan has turned out to be nowhere near what was initially hyped when the technology came out...
Enter the M-Disc, the supposed 1,000 year DVD:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/torture-testing-the-1000-year-dvd/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-1000-year-dvd-is-here/
http://site.produplicator.com/downloads/Manuals/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf
http://www.ritek.com/m-disc/eng/index.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2933...ewed-your-data-good-for-a-thousand-years.html
I have to admit that I haven't been a big fan of optical media, especially DVD recorders/players. In my own DVD player often, and I assume it's because of dust, the DVD will stutter and fail to play. Often ejecting it and re-installing it clears up the problem. i assume it's dust on the DVD.
In any case there has to be some media that can at least make an attempt to guarantee that important data be stored on something that's both accessible and reliable. I'm not referring to day-to-day use, but actually permanent archives that could be used when needed. Possibly the m-disc could fit the bill.
The old standard used to be the Taiyo-Yuden, which I suspect is the now-defunct company that BSDGuy was referring to. You can still find their media on the market buy they did indeed shut down operations:
http://www.myce.com/news/victorjvc-media-shutting-down-in-december-76342/
M-disc may be a viable option for long term storage. We'll see.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/torture-testing-the-1000-year-dvd/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-1000-year-dvd-is-here/
http://site.produplicator.com/downloads/Manuals/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf
http://www.ritek.com/m-disc/eng/index.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2933...ewed-your-data-good-for-a-thousand-years.html
I have to admit that I haven't been a big fan of optical media, especially DVD recorders/players. In my own DVD player often, and I assume it's because of dust, the DVD will stutter and fail to play. Often ejecting it and re-installing it clears up the problem. i assume it's dust on the DVD.
In any case there has to be some media that can at least make an attempt to guarantee that important data be stored on something that's both accessible and reliable. I'm not referring to day-to-day use, but actually permanent archives that could be used when needed. Possibly the m-disc could fit the bill.
The old standard used to be the Taiyo-Yuden, which I suspect is the now-defunct company that BSDGuy was referring to. You can still find their media on the market buy they did indeed shut down operations:
http://www.myce.com/news/victorjvc-media-shutting-down-in-december-76342/
M-disc may be a viable option for long term storage. We'll see.
Suggested in some other topics, worth suggesting here: wait, look out/listen for storage-related announcements around WWDC 2016..
This thread is about a year and a half old. SSD prices have dropped. Maybe a new question might be "Is there any point to even considering a hybrid at all?" The only place I can see it is if someone has a system with big data requirements and only one drive space available to replace an existing drive, as in a newer laptop with no optical drive. Most of the newer Macs are also coming with PCIe based SSDs which now tends to rule drives out all HDD based units all together.
If you go over to the iMac section you'll still see HDDs referenced. Some people just need big storage, however most of them are looking a Fusion setups to get it. An even better question might be "Is anyone still making hybrid drives?" I don't know the answer to that.
Apple is still selling Fusion drives in their iMacs and Mac Minis. Back in 2015, when I bought my iMac, I would have loved to get a 1TB SSD, but the money Apple was charging was extreme, there was no way I could afford it, there was no way I was going to plunk down 3,000 for an iMac. Instead I opted for the fusion drive and saved 700 bucks
As long as big storage is required, big HDDs won't go away. Example: I have a bunch of DVDs that are all now beginning to fail. Instead of re-copying or re-making them on new optical media, which I consider to be unbelievably unreliable, I'm looking at taking all the files off the DVDs, putting them on a large HDD and then using an old system as a video server. This wouldn't be feasible with SSDs because we're talking terabytes of data and it would cost a fortune. I also see SSDs as still being unproven in the long term, whereas a mirrored HDD system could be. The speed of an SSD isn't needed for serving up video, and there wouldn't be much need for a Fusion either...or for that matter even a hybrid. An HDD system like this could be put together for probably less than $150, consider how cheap HDDs are these days.
Not a bad plan, but you might run into a problem copying the or playing the actual file if the DVD is copy protected. I don't know for sure but I think that might be a problem.
What kind of "old system?" I did something like that years ago with an old Core Duo Mac Mini. It couldn't be used for newer OSes because it was Core Duo instead of Core 2 Duo, so I used it to display web videos, regular videos stored on the drive, and music. It sort of became a little media center. I eventually had to sell it though because I had too many computers (or so someone told me
). To copy the video content, I used the command line to gain access to DVDs and then copied the video contents. The contents usually have weird names that don't necessarily match what they're content is, but you could tell which they were because of the big size of the file. I could copy that file to the HDD. I didn't do anything that was copy protected, but it might be worth a shot.
The old system would probably be a 2006 Core Duo iMac, but it got me thinking, what's to stop me from using some old PowerPC unit to do it. All it would be doing is displaying content to an external monitor (i.e. the TV) and the old PowerPC Titanium I have hasn't been used for years. Why not put it to work. The only thing I'd be concerned about is the GPT vs. Apple formatted (PPC types) and I'm not sure that's an issue for an external drive. I haven't had any real time to look into this yet. It's all just an idea right now.
From a topic about Sierra:
When guiding someone, in person, I typically direct them first to a capacity that will suit their needs and that's most often 1 TB so, for example, £80.79 for a Seagate ST1000LM014, hybrid.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/c/computing...plinProduct.price|0&page=1&productsPerPage=12 at a glance the cheapest 1 TB solid state drive is around £250 and yes, someone might find things cheaper elsewhere but still, the expense is considerable.
When guiding someone, in person, I typically direct them first to a capacity that will suit their needs and that's most often 1 TB so, for example, £80.79 for a Seagate ST1000LM014, hybrid.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/c/computing...plinProduct.price|0&page=1&productsPerPage=12 at a glance the cheapest 1 TB solid state drive is around £250 and yes, someone might find things cheaper elsewhere but still, the expense is considerable.
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All I'm saying is that more and more... with today's os's, having a spinning drive is, i many ways, an utterly miserable experience. So when giving your advice, while the their preferred capacity is a key question, you would be doing them a disservice to not explain the costs and benefits of the SSD option as well.
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Costs and benefits were always discussed but to be honest, I never described the potential utter misery of using what the vast majority of colleagues were using, because none of those hard disk drive users ever expressed misery about their very well-performing, well-specified computers.
Its utter missry if you've ever used an ssd. Obviously you havent, so the ignorant teach the ignorant in your cases.
I'll never buy an HDD equipped machine again. Between my rMBP and SSD-only gaming PC, my 2011 iMac was miserable with it's old 1TB HDD. Doing basic tasks were a chore. It got so bad that I went through the hassle to open up the iMac using OWC's kit and put a 480GB SSD in there. Totally worth the hassle of removing the iMac's screen.
HDD's are utterly miserable. Unless you absolutely need a ton of storage for cheap(which very, very few people actually do) then I recommend pure SSD every time. This isn't 2009, you can get a decent amount of SSD storage for the price.
Unfortunately, what annoys me to no end with Apple is that you either get one extreme or the other: Ultra fast yet ridiculously expensive PCIe SSD, or ridiculously slow cheap HDDs. Apple has the fusion drives, but Apple could easily offer a 500GB or 1TB SATA SSD for the same price as a fusion drive and not have to deal with the fusion drive mess.
Agreed.
That's mistaken. I do use solid state drives. In the Sierra software topic, near the top of page 5 I wrote:
"… Right now I have three Macs … one of which … internal SSD …"
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Trying to copy commercial DVDs turned out to be difficult. There are ways around it but it isn't just a case of copying the files to the hard drive, FWIW.
Frustrating isn't it? You buy a commercial DVD and you can't back it up because of corporate paranoia and mistrust.