Fusion Drive or 2 Separate Drives?

[chevychase]

I have a Late 2011 15" MacBook Pro i7 w/16GB of Ram, 250GB Samsung SSD in the main bay and a 1TB Apple HGST drive installed in the optical bay.

I am wondering what would be best... Fusion Drive or keep the 2 separate drives. I plan on using Parallels on occasion and will be adding a 2/3TB network drive for backups regardless.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

If you create a fusion drive then OSX will only put the windows partition on the HDD portion, if this doesn't bother you then in OSX fusion will manage your files for the best speed and efficiency it can. If you want your windows partition on the SSD then you'll have to manage all your files etc for both Oses yourself.

 

[Fishrrman]

Are you satisfied with the way things are going now?

If so.... why change?

 

[maflynn]

It all boils down, do you want to control where your data is located or let the OS handle it?

Also as mentioned, any other OS will go on the spinner and not the SSD. I have windows on my iMac and booting up win10 is a bit slow because of the hard drive.

 

[chevychase]

Thanks for all the responses. I wasn't aware that with Fusion it would put the Windows on the HDD. Definitely something to think about as far as boot time goes.

Initially I was thinking of upgrading to a 500GB Samsung SSD and make 2 partitions, one for Mac and one for Windows and have nice boot times and still keep the 1TB storage in the optical bay. After reading all your posts, looks like that may be the way to go.

 

[CoastalOR]

Thanks for all the responses. I wasn't aware that with Fusion it would put the Windows on the HDD. Definitely something to think about as far as boot time goes.
Initially I was thinking of upgrading to a 500GB Samsung SSD and make 2 partitions, one for Mac and one for Windows and have nice boot times and still keep the 1TB storage in the optical bay. After reading all your posts, looks like that may be the way to go.

Another reason to possibly pass on using Fusion:
The Fusion configuration needs a good backup plan because if one of the fused drive fails then everything is gone.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

I had a 2008 iMac where I did a "roll your own" Fusion Drive with a 240GB internal SSD and a 1TB FW800 external HDD. That worked out well the majority of the time, but there were times where the external drive lost power, got disconnected or had other issues that caused me to lose connection. On one occasion the external drive got corrupted and I lost the whole Fusion array. But that's what backups are for...

My point being, my experience of having a Fusion Drive comprised of both an internal SSD and external HDD was positive enough that I'd suggest that doing it the way you are thinking about would be even better. However, as others have mentioned, your Bootcamp partition will be on the HDD and not the SSD. Given the troubles I had, I eventually went back to an SSD internal boot drive and multiple external FW800 drives, and just kept my apps and important stuff on the SSD.

With 500GB SSDs now costing HALF of what my 240GB SSD did some years ago, I'd be tempted to get a 500GB SSD, partition that into 350GB OS X / 150GB Win, and maybe also partition your 1TB HDD into OS X storage and Windows storage. Heck, a 1TB 850 EVO SSD costs less than my original 240GB SSD, so I know what I'd be doing!

 

[chevychase]

Thanks for all the help. I've decided to skip the Fusion drive and just run 2 separate drives (SSD/1TB). I'll also be adding a 2/3TB network drive to handle backups for both drives.

 

[kevink2]

The comment about Windows only being on the hard drive is if you use Boot Camp, and want to boot Windows directly and not within virtualization.

I've setup my Mac Pro a couple months ago with a SSD and hybrid drive fusion setup. Let the Mac handle it. But I have an external Time Machine backup.