Fusion drive or stick to separate SSD and HDD

[Pjotr28]

Hi,

In my mac pro I have 4 hard drives and one 256gb sad User folders are on one of the other hard drives. Will it make sense to build a fusion drives using the ssd and one of the hard drives? Or should I just leave it this way.

 

[Bear]

I presume OS X is installed on the SSD?

This would cost some money, but I would suggest you leave the system disk alone and get another SSD to use for a fusion drive with the user folders.

 

[Pjotr28]

Yes 10.8 on the SSD. So another SSD icw a hd will give the best performance?

ps I want to reinstall the OS in any case cause my mac pro with gtx670 is giving problems. Perhaps this could fix it.

 

[Erasmus]

I think you should just keep them separate. 256GB is big enough to hold your system, and a lot of apps, and still have enough space for a lot of large documents.

Fusion drive does have significant drawbacks. For example, the loss of control over the location of data, and possible resulting speed decrease if the system decides to move something to the HDD which it shouldn't. Also, there's a higher chance of drive failure as if the HDD fails, your system won't work anymore until you replace the HDD and reinstall, whereas if you do keep things separate, you will still have a functioning computer.

IMHO, a fusion drive's convenience is not worth the loss of control for someone who is even a little techno-savvy.

 

[throAU]

I don't get the whole "put the OS on SSD and use spinning disks for your data".


If you are in any way a power user, your data is far bigger and more disk intensive than your apps.

WOW your machine boots in 10 seconds. Who cares if all the data I'm working on is slow.

Now if you don't do any real work this may not be an issue, but...


If you're wiping the system out anyway, i'd try set up a fusion drive and see how it performs for you.

 

[Frost7]

I don't get the whole "put the OS on SSD and use spinning disks for your data".


If you are in any way a power user, your data is far bigger and more disk intensive than your apps.

WOW your machine boots in 10 seconds. Who cares if all the data I'm working on is slow.

And this would be why I went the Velociraptor route. <750GB is just too small, and SSDs over 512GB have had utterly outrageous prices until Crucial's 960GB M500s launched a couple months ago.

10K rpm 1TB HDD made far more sense.

 

[philipma1957]

diy fusion drives are really nice


my thread on a 960gb crucial ssd with 1 tb hdd in a mac mini.


https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1568313/

the 2010 mac pro would be perfect for a 256gb ssd + 2tb hdd fusion.

very important to have a big ssd. 256gb or 500gb ssd work great with 1tb hdd in mac minis.

I build them all the time for music guys/ mixers recorders etc.

I wish I had kept my mac pro oh well.

 

[Dalton63841]

I don't get the whole "put the OS on SSD and use spinning disks for your data".


If you are in any way a power user, your data is far bigger and more disk intensive than your apps.

WOW your machine boots in 10 seconds. Who cares if all the data I'm working on is slow.

Now if you don't do any real work this may not be an issue, but...


If you're wiping the system out anyway, i'd try set up a fusion drive and see how it performs for you.

Which is why I went the 120GB SSD + 1TB SSHD route.

 

[Dweez]

I don't get the whole "put the OS on SSD and use spinning disks for your data".


If you are in any way a power user, your data is far bigger and more disk intensive than your apps.

WOW your machine boots in 10 seconds. Who cares if all the data I'm working on is slow.

Now if you don't do any real work this may not be an issue, but...


If you're wiping the system out anyway, i'd try set up a fusion drive and see how it performs for you.

Exactly this. Put the OS and the data you access the most on the fastest media, and data which sits without much modification on slower media.

 

[throAU]

Exactly this. Put the OS and the data you access the most on the fastest media, and data which sits without much modification on slower media.

Which is kinda what Fusion is supposed to do. Automatically.

Wonder if it's been tweaked in Mavericks? Flash + spinning disks has been used successfully in the enterprise space for a number of years now.

 

[Dweez]

Which is kinda what Fusion is supposed to do. Automatically.

Wonder if it's been tweaked in Mavericks? Flash + spinning disks has been used successfully in the enterprise space for a number of years now.

Isn't the RAM on the fusion drive essentially cache, or is it actual storage? I guess I don't know the technology well enough.

 

[Nugget]

Isn't the RAM on the fusion drive essentially cache, or is it actual storage? I guess I don't know the technology well enough.

With a fusion drive your total storage is the combined capacity of the SSD plus the capacity of the HDD. The size is additive, not just a layer of cache.

 

[Tesselator]

Isn't the RAM on the fusion drive essentially cache, or is it actual storage? I guess I don't know the technology well enough.

It acts as both. It the free space is available it will write all files "to a cache" and then decide based on some algorithm if it gets to stay in NAND or be moved to the rotating platter. Likewise data on the rotational plater may at some later point get promoted to live in NAND - demotions also occur and one of the criteria for demotion/promotion is access frequency. File size is also taken into account with respect to the size of free NAND. etc. etc.

So far most people are reporting that the process results in a volume which acts as if it's all NAND - speed-wise.