internal fusion drive vs external SSD

[ashhamari]

Hello Guys,
I have latest imac 27 inch with 1TB of fusion drive (sadly apple doesnt sell pure SSD drive mac in india). I am wondering if i buy an external SSD and use it for photo editing and storage in lightroom. so this way can i improve the performance?
please suggest

 

[Fishrrman]

Why don't you download the Blackmagic Speed Test utility, and post your current numbers here?

 

[jlseattle]

I think the the drive speeds are double. 300-400 on the fusion drive versus 800 on the external SSD. The internal SSD is at 2400. I might have these numbers slightly wrong and anyone can jump in with accurate read/write speeds.

 

[noah82]

I just got a great deal on a late 2015 27'' iMac and was not pleased with the performance of the Fusion drive since I've been used to pure SSD over the past few years. I used a 1TB Samsung Evo SSD as my boot drive in a Plugable USB 3.0 dock, and it was night and day compared to the Fusion drive. Over 2x the speed.

Yesterday I did take the plunge and opened up the iMac and replaced the spinning drive. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it helped that I bought the right tools to do the job from iFixit.

Since you have the 2017 iMac, you can get identical performance via the Thunderbolt/USBC port without having to open it up.

 

[tipoo]

The 1TB Fusion Drive only has 32GB of flash cache, assuming the 2017 model, or 24GB if it's the previous. The OG had 128GB.

If it's one of the first two, an external SSD will absolutely be a huge help. You can even install macOS right on it and boot from it, and use the internal 1TB drive as storage.

 

[jlseattle]

According this article the SSD's via external are about 500mb/s on external ssd via thunderbolt:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/best-ssd-for-mac-3600870/

Internal SSD is at 2200 - 2400 mb/s.

 

[ashhamari]

thanks for all the replys,
i am not sure how to use the blackmagic speed test. i have downloaded it and used it. please see the result and let me know what does it mean?

Why don't you download the Blackmagic Speed Test utility, and post your current numbers here?

 

[looking4anotebo]

so slightly slower than most external ssds.

 

[robeddie]

I just got a great deal on a late 2015 27'' iMac and was not pleased with the performance of the Fusion drive since I've been used to pure SSD over the past few years. I used a 1TB Samsung Evo SSD as my boot drive in a Plugable USB 3.0 dock, and it was night and day compared to the Fusion drive. Over 2x the speed.

Yesterday I did take the plunge and opened up the iMac and replaced the spinning drive. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it helped that I bought the right tools to do the job from iFixit.

Since you have the 2017 iMac, you can get identical performance via the Thunderbolt/USBC port without having to open it up.

I just did the same thing. Took out the internal fusion drive and put in a 2tb Crucial SSD. So not only do I have a fusion drive now as a backup drive, but I also have access to the 28gb internal SSD that was originally part of the fusion drive.

Like you, I was a tad nervous about opening up the iMac (2017 model) but it turned out to be a breeze. Just take your time and be careful.

 

[cynics]

Hello Guys,
I have latest imac 27 inch with 1TB of fusion drive (sadly apple doesnt sell pure SSD drive mac in india). I am wondering if i buy an external SSD and use it for photo editing and storage in lightroom. so this way can i improve the performance?
please suggest

Might be too late for this but the 2tb and 3tb Fusion Drives have much larger SSD portions (128gb vs 24gb found in the 1tb model). If you can only get Fusion the 2tb or 3tb would be a better option for you.

For photo editing you'll be fine though. Lightroom itself will end up residing on the SSD portion if used enough. The files used for your projects are typically small enough that performance won't be unbearably slow. And transferring the media onto the Mac will likely be bottlenecked elsewhere, and if you aren't because you have a UHS-II or III card with dedicated reader it won't bad for imagines.

If you want to make sure Lightroom stays on the/a SSD you'll need to unfuse the drive (I don't recommend this personally) or install MacOS on and external, make it the start up disk and then reinstall Lightroom on that. However more than likely Lightroom will be on the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive.

As far as external USB SSDs go. I really like the Samsung T3 which I think was replaced with the T5. Both are good.