Is there a way to make external media drives "faster"? What I mean is that mine take quite a few seconds to spin up when I want to access their files. I moved my music onto an external media drive a long time ago, but it certainly made things less quick when navigating in iTunes bc the drive has to spin up when you first pull up iTunes, or even if it's open, but been inactive for awhile
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New iMac 1TB fusion or 512GB SSD
- Thread starter gelie
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
There is an option in the preferences, to avoid that the drives go in "sleep mode" after a certain time without using them.
Good work. More decisive than me. I am still wrestling with the 3TB Fusion Drive versus 512SSD decision myself.
Pretty sure it is 7200rpm for the 2TB Fusion and just 5400 for the 1TB.
Yes I'm a bit OCD about backups now after my iphone was not backing up automatically.
I find a TC brilliant and connect a USB drive for _offsite_ weekly backups.
The TM seems to 'pick up' on the external USB drive attached to the TC automatically which I really like. Well done apple nice touch.
Shame the USB port on the TC isn't USB 3 but we cant have everything.
Last edited:
If access time is a big care-about, then I would buy a $350 1TB 2.5" SSD and stick it in a cheap USB3 enclosure. Now you don't have spin up time and fetching the directory tree will be super fast.
Fusion drives are OK but how OK kind of depends on your computing style. I mess with lots of files ~1GB and several VMs. With an onboard 512SSD and tons of external storage my environment works great. My SSD is half full and I get fast access with my larger stuff off board. It takes more work to manually split and "think" about your files. At least the fusion does that for you but steer clear of the new 1TB fusions for sure. They don't have enough SSD IMHO.
You didn't follow my directions or they weren't simple enough. Your iTunes 1 directory is a copy of your iTunes folder and NOT your iTunes media folder. Inside your iTunes 1 folder is your iTunes media folder.
There are two generally accepted ways to keep your iTunes on an external
Method 1....move the entire iTunes folder then tell iTunes to use the new library location (hold the option key when starting iTunes). Upside is the ease of doing it. Downside is the album artwork cache and database is on the external.
Method 2....what I do....only move the media folder and adjust your iTunes preferences to the new media folder location. Upside is much faster access for operating iTunes. Downside, setup is a bit more complicated.
512SSD and external drive, that's what im going for..
Since I do a lot of photography, whatever HD i choose I would fill up soon.. so I rather keep all my files on external drivers.
Since I do a lot of photography, whatever HD i choose I would fill up soon.. so I rather keep all my files on external drivers.
thats the problem I'm having, i have 256gb In my macbook pro and its no where near enough so it has to be hooked to an external usb adapter with 2 usb 3 4TB drives so my portable laptop is not portable.
I know a desktop will be better as it stays in 1 place but my desk will be full of drives and cables
Thanks. All i was attempting to do(for the time being,before by a new iMac) was to have any new music I purchase go directly onto the new drive. I will move my entire music collection just prior upgrading to new iMac.
I asked Apple Store online chat this n he assured me that both drives read up to 1.8gb/sec.
Also the 256gb model in the MacBook pros 2015 read up to 2.0gb/sec so I don't see why they would limit it
thats the problem I'm having, i have 256gb In my macbook pro and its no where near enough so it has to be hooked to an external usb adapter with 2 usb 3 4TB drives so my portable laptop is not portable.
I know a desktop will be better as it stays in 1 place but my desk will be full of drives and cables
But that Situation won't really change, even if you chose the 3TB Fusion.
So in the end there has to be a external solution anyway.
I found a solution for me:
I have a 2 Bay NAS (RAID1), where I store my Music, Documents, Movies etc. - everything that doesn't need a high speed connection. This has the benefit, that I can access these files from other devices too (e.g. watch movies via my TVs DLNA feature).
Files that need higher speed are on my external 1TB SSD, that is inside a UASP capable USB 3 enclousure, so I don't have any issues with the speed and can use the full 470 MB/s speed of the SSD.
That's a good option, but a little expensive. It just seems a shame we have such fast CPUs internal SSDs, and fast connections (USB 3 and TB2), and yet the drives are so small they force us to use externals, which are extremely slow to spin up in comparison.
I guess the real question is if all that internal speed increase is more important than the size loss (I'm comparison current desktop/laptops with a few years ago when most internal drives were 7200 RPM, but much larger)
That's good to know then. Chalking up another point for the SSD...
I was thinking about a NAS as a solution for the future, for the multi-device access, so again this could be another reason to go the SSD route right now.
Here's my idea:
I'm a writer, editor, and an amateur photographer. So the heaviest software I would use is Photoshop. I think I simply don't need the speed of pure SSD. Fusion Drive might be fine for me.
I have a 4-bay NAS, too. But I believe that internal storage is better than anything external. I want to keep my core data and library simply staying on my main computer. Keep things simple. So 512GB is too small, and 1TB is too expensive.
And the most important thing is, I have never really used Fusion Drive. I can't tell whether it's a good choice for me or not. And I would never know until using it by myself. In the meantime, I think Fusion Drive makes a good balance between storage and speed. And it's much more affordable than SSD.
So I think I can gamble on it. If it suits my computing style, then I would have made a very, very smart choice. If it doesn't, at least I have tried this kind of HD, which is an amazing technology these years. And It's just a computer, I won't keep it forever, I will change it in 5 or 8 years anyway. I will go for SSD without hesitate (if there will still be a choice) and, I can definitely afford 1 TB or even larger SSD at that time.
Also, if Fusion Drive is really a bad idea, I can still change the HD into SSD after 1 or 2 years. Besides SSD itself, the only price I would pay is losing my Apple Care.
Last edited:
Thanks, some really balanced reasoning there and I am in a similar situation i.e Photoshop is my heaviest software, 1TB too expensive, no personal experience of Fusion day to day etc....
My rMBP has SSD and just flies, so have got really used to it, but having said that my 2009 iMac has the original spinner in it so the Fusion is going to be a significant upgrade anyway.
I had a play with the previous iteration 5k iMac with Fusion in the Apple Store and it was really snappy, but then everything I tried would have been using the SSD.
I think my biggest concern is reliability as opposed to performance. My current spinner has lasted nearly 7 years but that would have been easier to swap out had it failed.
Like you, I would be looking to swap the computer out in 5-8 years time so would definitely be expecting to go SSD at that point.
Just another thought. Since i need to move my current music file(~500gb) to a new HD, I'm going to need on that supports FW & USB3. i see OWC sells a 2TB for $194. A new 2TB USB 3.0 /eSATA ( for backing up new iMac 512SSD) is another $178. So the the external HD will cost $373 vs an additional $450 for a 1TB SSD. Is that a better option? Or will i be to close to capacity given that my current 1TB has 630gb? Thanks
@ssls6 Another question . How do i go about setting up TM for the "Media" drive. do I need to change something in preferences ? Thanks