Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Fusion Drive Happiness?

scottydawg

scottydawg

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 22, 2008
316
10
Sacramento, CA
I ordered the new iMac 27" last week with a 3TB Fusion and now am reading 90% (maybe 99%) of the posts here that I should have gone the SSD route. I am wondering if anyone that has the Fusion on their rig can chime in and let me know their hopefully positive experiences.
 
I have the 1 TB Fusion in my late 2014 Retina iMac. All of my files are stored on my Mac Server and Linux server. I like having two hard drives in my iMac in case one dies down the road outside of the warranty, and I won't have to have an external one hanging off of it to work when I hand it down to someone in my family.

It seems very fast and I also partioned it equally at just over 500 megs per partition. That way I have an identical boot disk using Carbon Copy in case I screw something up, and I need to reboot to the backup drive. I cannot afford to be down long because I use this computer for my company work at home.

I'm very happy with my setup and I only use 150 Gigs of hard drive space and that includes a Windows 7 VM. Everything loads very fast.
 
My current Mac has the same fusion drive as you. 128gb ssd with 5400rpm hdd. Make no mistake, it's fast and seamless. It's also the only way to get 3TB. But in my case, a wedding gallery is 60-80GB. So occasionally the 128 ssd fills up. How do I know? You'll know when the Mac has to access the 5400rpm drive because everything SLOWS down. But for most people that will never happen.

The other point that's been made about the fusion drive - it's still reading at 700mb/s. Just like the previous generation fusion drive. The new 1tb ssd on the other hand, is reading at 1900mb/s! Nearly 3 times faster!
 
ohsnaphappy said:
My current Mac has the same fusion drive as you. 128gb ssd with 5400rpm hdd. Make no mistake, it's fast and seamless. It's also the only way to get 3TB. But in my case, a wedding gallery is 60-80GB. So occasionally the 128 ssd fills up. How do I know? You'll know when the Mac has to access the 5400rpm drive because everything SLOWS down. But for most people that will never happen.

The other point that's been made about the fusion drive - it's still reading at 700mb/s. Just like the previous generation fusion drive. The new 1tb ssd on the other hand, is reading at 1900mb/s! Nearly 3 times faster!
Click to expand...

Wow thats insanely fast for the 1TB.... excited to get mine now haha
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3568358
I hava a 1TB fusion in my late 2013 27" iMac and I'm super satisfied with it.
Obviously a pure SSD setup would be faster, but Fusion really hits the spot for price vs performance.
 
Thank you all for some reassurance, I was starting to think I need to cancel the order and rework the whole thing.

Is it possible to change out to a SSD at some point down the road?
 
antman2x2 said:
Its going to be fine speed wise, but for longevity hard drives just don't have what it takes.
Click to expand...
I think that's needless scare-mongering. Hard disks are an established technology that have a long mtbf. Before the advent of SSD, there were millions of happy users who weren't complaining about the longevity of their drives. Yes, there's failures, that's what backups are for, but anything can fail. And there are loads of people out there with hard drives that are older than 5 or even 10 years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aevan and scottydawg
scottydawg said:
Thank you all for some reassurance, I was starting to think I need to cancel the order and rework the whole thing.

Is it possible to change out to a SSD at some point down the road?
Click to expand...
You can add an external SSD (or super fast flash drive) via USB or Thunderbolt at any time! Although the machine can be opened up with great difficulty to add one, the ports on the back are more than enough to handle super fast drives! You can even boot from them without issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Coldmode and scottydawg
I see on the Apple site that they mention the 1 TB drives are 5400. They don't seem to mention what the 2 and 3 TB drives are - are they 5400 as well? Or 7200?
 
richpjr said:
I see on the Apple site that they mention the 1 TB drives are 5400. They don't seem to mention what the 2 and 3 TB drives are - are they 5400 as well? Or 7200?
Click to expand...

On the page for the 27" (tech specs page)it says 7200rpm HDD - but doesn't say what speed for the Fusion - but would assume it's also a 7200rpm if the lower model drive has it...
 
Last edited:
Many times the same people who complain about the heat of the hard drive are the same people who have the 4GB mobile GPU that is running at 200 degrees under load.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aevan
I had a Retina MacBook Pro for a couple of years in accompaniment with my 2011 27" iMac. I've just upgraded to a 5K 27" iMac with a 1TB Fusion Drive. Very good speeds on it in comparison to the MacBook Pro, based on day to day working on it.
You won't regret it, and I had lingering doubts about Fusion or SSD. Boots up ridiculously quick and some of the functions that need an SSD to see any benefit are quick enough while using it to be more than happy with it.
 
While speeds and feeds are interesting reads, sometimes they're little more than that. Have had a 3TB Fusion on my iMac for almost 3yrs, and it's been great. The move from spinning disk to SSD was perhaps the biggest single innovation in PC performance in my lifetime. The move from SSD to Fusion, or back, isn't noticeable to me. Really, unless you're routinely moving massive files around, in your daily workflow, you probably won't be able to tell the difference.

What does matter, for me, is capacity. In the process of trying to migrate from my iMac 3TB Fusion to a new rMBP 15 with a 512G SSD. While I don't notice a difference in I/O performance between them, I did notice having to shuffle almost 1TB of iTunes/iPhoto/etc. to an external drive. I also noticed the cost for that drive (~$400 for a 2.5 SSD and enclosure).

If the 1TB SSD and 3TB Fusion were the same price, I might consider it. But I hate paying and extra $200 bucks for a drive that offers 1/6 the capacity, while providing me with the same meaningful level of performance. YMMV.
 
  • Like
Reactions: scottydawg
Very happy with my 3TB Fusion Drive in my late 2013 27" iMac.
I can't see the difference in speed with my 2015 SSD MBA on current use, and I have 3TB of internal storage... So convenient! I would do the same choice today :)
 
iA724 said:
So basically: SSD is faster than a Fusion, but fusion is cheaper? Whats the reliability of each?
Click to expand...
Part of a Fusion Drive is a spinning disk hard drive, so there are parts to wear out. But desktop hard drives are so good these days it's probably more likely that you buy a new computer before the drive fails than it actually fails while you're using it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3568358
Coldmode said:
Part of a Fusion Drive is a spinning disk hard drive, so there are parts to wear out. But desktop hard drives are so good these days it's probably more likely that you buy a new computer before the drive fails than it actually fails while you're using it.
Click to expand...

Good point, BUT an SSD is faster? so would you rather have a regular SSD or a fusion drive?
 
iA724 said:
So basically: SSD is faster than a Fusion, but fusion is cheaper? Whats the reliability of each?
Click to expand...

A fusion is as reliable as either part so an average 5-6 years for the HDD portion and the SSD will probably get about 10 years depending on usage. However HDD's tend to go slowly over time making them easy to replace when needed the SSD can just go in a second. Of course any electronic component can just fail at any time but thats just the risk you take with any piece of tech.
 
OP asked:
"Is it possible to change out to a SSD at some point down the road?"

It might be "possible", but would be difficult AND very expensive.

To my knowledge, no one currently sells a replacement PCIe-based SSD blade drive that will fit.

Unless a product hits the market (and it WILL NOT be cheap), the only source will be used drives from ebay, etc.

Don't worry about the fusion drive.
If you have one, you already HAVE an "SSD" inside, along with an HDD.

Since you got the 3tb fusion drive, I'm going to -guess- that you have a 128gb SSD and a 3tb HDD.

If you wanted the fastest speeds possible, you could "split" the fusion drive, and run the SSD and HDD portions "as separate drives".
Thus, you could keep the OS and apps (and basic account data) on the SSD drive, and keep "large libraries" (photos, music, movies) on the HDD.

It's not much more involved to manage two drive icons on the desktop, than it is to have just one.
I'm right now looking at SEVEN drives mounted on my Mac.
And I know where stuff's supposed to go, as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3568358
iA724 said:
Good point, BUT an SSD is faster? so would you rather have a regular SSD or a fusion drive?
Click to expand...
Yes, an SSD is faster. But since part of the Fusion Drive is an SSD, the stuff on that part will load at the same speed as from a pure SSD. The rest of the stuff on the Fusion will load at slow spinning disk speeds. I would much rather have a 512GB SSD than a 2TB Fusion.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3568358
scottydawg said:
Thank you all for some reassurance, I was starting to think I need to cancel the order and rework the whole thing.

Is it possible to change out to a SSD at some point down the road?
Click to expand...
I nearly made the same mistake and am now ordering the the 512GB SSD and going to add a USB3 HDD external for media files.
So glad I came on here to ask questions before buying the fusion drive. The 512 GB works out same price for me as a 2 TB Fusion I just need to spend £50 extra for a 2 TB external. This I believe offers the best performance. You still have time to exchange your machine don't have buyers remorse after its too late to swap it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back