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The 768GB Flash Storage $1300 club
- Thread starter animatedude
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I'm in the club. Fully loaded 27". Except memory obviously.
I've been exclusively using my MacBook Pro that only has an SDD, for about 7 months now. Going back to a spinning disc would have seemed like a downgrade.
I would have liked a 512 option, but budgeted for the 768, so it's all good.
I know there are cheaper options, but not without making sacrifices. My sacrifice was a hit to my wallet, which I planned for.
I've been exclusively using my MacBook Pro that only has an SDD, for about 7 months now. Going back to a spinning disc would have seemed like a downgrade.
I would have liked a 512 option, but budgeted for the 768, so it's all good.
I know there are cheaper options, but not without making sacrifices. My sacrifice was a hit to my wallet, which I planned for.
Totally. The only thing with spinning disks in our home is a 15TB NAS setup. Macbook airs have spoiled us with the fast SSD storage.
Ok so my question to a lot of you guys who are much smarter than me when it comes to this stuff is this, I'm waiting for my new iMac 27 just like most of you, got the 3.4,i7 1tb fusion option, gonna upgrade to 32gb ram myself,680 graphics,.. I just couldnt justify spending $1300 for the ssd. However i have a fully maxed out retina i just bought and i love the speed. Im looking into an external ssd, thunderbolt, raid 0 to basically run everything off that but still take adavantage of the fusion drives sad also. HOW THE HELL DO I DO THIS IF FUSION DRIVE HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN??!!! thankyou in advance guys and sorry for the caps, i know how some of you are very anal about your caps lol
Your question is confusing...
If you have a external SSD thunderbolt RAID-0 drive, simply boot to it and that will be your OS X environment. The Fusion drive will appear as a separate drive for your use, but it will not be "linked" in any way to your external drive ... you will simply have 2 drives in your computer.
You can "break" the Fusion drive and revert it back to 2 separate internal drives, and then use the 128GB internal SSD for Windows if you wished, and use the hard disk however you wish, even splitting it into 2 partitions for OS X storage, and Windows NTFS storage. But it will not be "linked' in any way, you would now have either 3 or 4 distinct disks.
As far as I know, you can't join a RAID-0 disk array into a Fusion drive ... it would be fun if you could however. Maybe someone has tried it???
-howard
yea sorry, i read it again and i was like yea noones going to understand that. So basically your saying there is a way that i can "break" the 128 drive from the fusion "intelligence" and just do with it what i wish? If thats true thats great, but my question is then how exactly do i do thatYour question is confusing...
If you have a external SSD thunderbolt RAID-0 drive, simply boot to it and that will be your OS X environment. The Fusion drive will appear as a separate drive for your use, but it will not be "linked" in any way to your external drive ... you will simply have 2 drives in your computer.
You can "break" the Fusion drive and revert it back to 2 separate internal drives, and then use the 128GB internal SSD for Windows if you wished, and use the hard disk however you wish, even splitting it into 2 partitions for OS X storage, and Windows NTFS storage. But it will not be "linked' in any way, you would now have either 3 or 4 distinct disks.
As far as I know, you can't join a RAID-0 disk array into a Fusion drive ... it would be fun if you could however. Maybe someone has tried it???
-howard
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Thanks for the quick response to howard, I understand how to boot the raid drive to osx, but im confused by how to break the 128 ssd part of the fusion to not having a mind of its own on where to put my files. Or does that just happen automatically when you take the osx off the mac and put it into my raid drive?yea sorry, i read it again and i was like yea noones going to understand that. So basically your saying there is a way that i can "break" the 128 drive from the fusion "intelligence" and just do with it what i wish? If thats true thats great, but my question is then how exactly do i do that
sorry if this is too much of a noob questionyea sorry, i read it again and i was like yea noones going to understand that. So basically your saying there is a way that i can "break" the 128 drive from the fusion "intelligence" and just do with it what i wish? If thats true thats great, but my question is then how exactly do i do that
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Thanks for the quick response to howard, I understand how to boot the raid drive to osx, but im confused by how to break the 128 ssd part of the fusion to not having a mind of its own on where to put my files. Or does that just happen automatically when you take the osx off the mac and put it into my raid drive?
http://www.macworld.com/article/2015664/how-to-split-up-a-fusion-drive.html
This line should catch your attention...
If you split up a Fusion Drive you got from Apple, you won't be able to use Disk Utility to format the drives. Disk Utility will detect that the two drives used to be an Apple Fusion Drive and show them in red text.
This line should catch your attention...
If you split up a Fusion Drive you got from Apple, you won't be able to use Disk Utility to format the drives. Disk Utility will detect that the two drives used to be an Apple Fusion Drive and show them in red text.
yea sorry, i read it again and i was like yea noones going to understand that. So basically your saying there is a way that i can "break" the 128 drive from the fusion "intelligence" and just do with it what i wish? If thats true thats great, but my question is then how exactly do i do that
----------
Thanks for the quick response to howard, I understand how to boot the raid drive to osx, but im confused by how to break the 128 ssd part of the fusion to not having a mind of its own on where to put my files. Or does that just happen automatically when you take the osx off the mac and put it into my raid drive?
You will have to use Terminal to do it from the command line:
The required commands are:
(note: you can use diskutil list and diskutil cs list to obtain the volume ID's on your computer)
diskutil cs deleteVolume < insert fusion logical volume ID here >
diskutil cs delete < insert coreStorage logical volume group ID here >
Look on page 2 of this article:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/1...ining-doc-ars-tears-open-apples-fusion-drive/
Here is how to rebuild it:
http://www.macworld.com/article/2014011/how-to-make-your-own-fusion-drive.html
-howard
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Thanks for that link ... I hadn't seen it before.
I don't have an "official" Fusion computer with the new Disk Utility to test with, I have only done DIY fusion drives ... making and breaking them.
If you use both commands to revert the drives back to non-coreStorage status, it will automatically reformat them to HFS+ and I would hope the new Disk Utility would leave them that way. If Disk Utility insists on joining any random SSD and hard disk it sees in your system into a Fusion drive ... many people are going to be ticked!
From the official diskutil coreStorage command OS X manual page:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/diskutil.8
delete lvgUUID
Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group. All logical volume families with their
logical volumes are removed, the logical volume group is destroyed, and the noworphaned
physical volumes are erased and partition-typed as Journaled HFS+.
-howard
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awesome! thanks hfg. Ill look into it more in depth tonight. glad to know its possible.You will have to use Terminal to do it from the command line:
The required commands are:
(note: you can use diskutil list and diskutil cs list to obtain the volume ID's on your computer)
diskutil cs deleteVolume < insert fusion logical volume ID here >
diskutil cs delete < insert coreStorage logical volume group ID here >
Look on page 2 of this article:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/1...ining-doc-ars-tears-open-apples-fusion-drive/
Here is how to rebuild it:
http://www.macworld.com/article/2014011/how-to-make-your-own-fusion-drive.html
-howard
----------
Thanks for that link ... I hadn't seen it before.
I don't have an "official" Fusion computer with the new Disk Utility to test with, I have only done DIY fusion drives ... making and breaking them.
If you use both commands to revert the drives back to non-coreStorage status, it will automatically reformat them to HFS+ and I would hope the new Disk Utility would leave them that way. If Disk Utility insists on joining any random SSD and hard disk it sees in your system into a Fusion drive ... many people are going to be ticked!
From the official diskutil coreStorage command OS X manual page:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/diskutil.8
delete lvgUUID
Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group. All logical volume families with their
logical volumes are removed, the logical volume group is destroyed, and the noworphaned
physical volumes are erased and partition-typed as Journaled HFS+.
-howard
I have noticed in the referenced MacWorld article, that they only did one step, the "cs delete" ... they didn't do the "cs deleteVolume" step for the Fusion volume-ID. It may be that the new distribution of Disk Utility sees that Fusion-ID in the disk list and uses it to try to rebuild / repair the Fusion drive.
This might allow a broken Fusion drive to be automatically repaired, whether the problem originates from data corruption, or replacement of either drive by the user due to failure or upgrade.
-howard
just finished reading all those articles. Thanks again guys for all those links. That cleared up alot of my apprehension about the fd. I realize now that everything goes to the ssd first and will spill over to hdd only after you reach the limit of the ssd. Then and only then will the fd start to move things accordingly. For me i keep most of my data on externals and i probabally wont even go over the 128 ever, so im really glad i got to read those links it explained so much. Thankyou again for putting up with my noobinessI have noticed in the referenced MacWorld article, that they only did one step, the "cs delete" ... they didn't do the "cs deleteVolume" step for the Fusion volume-ID. It may be that the new distribution of Disk Utility sees that Fusion-ID in the disk list and uses it to try to rebuild / repair the Fusion drive.
This might allow a broken Fusion drive to be automatically repaired, whether the problem originates from data corruption, or replacement of either drive by the user due to failure or upgrade.
-howard
I have noticed in the referenced MacWorld article, that they only did one step, the "cs delete" ... they didn't do the "cs deleteVolume" step for the Fusion volume-ID. It may be that the new distribution of Disk Utility sees that Fusion-ID in the disk list and uses it to try to rebuild / repair the Fusion drive.
This might allow a broken Fusion drive to be automatically repaired, whether the problem originates from data corruption, or replacement of either drive by the user due to failure or upgrade.
-howard
That's a great catch.
I anxiously await some brave Mini or iMac owners report of wiping out the factory config and running the ML installer from Internet Recovery or a USB installer.
I would hope if you are savvy enough to delete the Fusion Drive, Disk Utility would respect that, but that may be a touch optimistic.
i dont understand, which external ssds r we talking? I mean name brands that are faster with more storage than the apple sad? not being sarcastic...serious question because i too was looking into external instead but found nothing great of interest...the lacie 1tb. hfg put up pics of a black magic test, didn't seem too impressive to me
First pic is the Lacie connected to a TB in a MBAir, second is two Lacies Daisy Chained.
Bottom line: it's cheaper, faster, bigger. Drawbacks: you can't install Windows on it, and it's external.
Personally i couldn't care less about the "drawbacks", i just report them for your info as we have debated this option vs. the Apple internal one at lenght
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I'm in the club. Fully loaded 27". Except memory obviously.
I've been exclusively using my MacBook Pro that only has an SSD, for about 7 months now. Going back to a spinning disc would have seemed like a downgrade.
I would have liked a 512 option, but budgeted for the 768, so it's all good.
I know there are cheaper options, but not without making sacrifices. My sacrifice was a hit to my wallet, which I planned for.
Hi Gene,
I've also ordered the iMac 27" SSD maxed out BTO "beast" (except for RAM). Ordered 1st Dec (Ships in 3-4 weeks) for delivery Dec 28 - Jan 7. (Still processing...arrgh).
I recently sold my MacBook Pro Retina to finance the new iMac.
And yes, once you've tasted pure SSD, you can't possibly go back to slow spinning HDD.
The anticipation is killing me...
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I also went with the SSD...
I wanted the same performance across both OS X and bootcamp windows which you cant do with fusion drive. I'm not too keen on cracking open the iMac to install my own SSD and regarding the external drive - the reason of buying an all-in-one was to keep everything all-in-one, not have an external drive with extra cords hanging around the desk.
I wouldn't call the extra $$ an investment considering they way IT goods depreciate, much like a car or boat. Everyone has a budget and spends what they can to meet their needs. Having not bought a new machine for many many years, I was able to justify spending a little more.
I guess my point is the same as others, that we will all be happy with our own individual choices.. as soon as they are delivered to our door that is!
I wanted the same performance across both OS X and bootcamp windows which you cant do with fusion drive. I'm not too keen on cracking open the iMac to install my own SSD and regarding the external drive - the reason of buying an all-in-one was to keep everything all-in-one, not have an external drive with extra cords hanging around the desk.
I wouldn't call the extra $$ an investment considering they way IT goods depreciate, much like a car or boat. Everyone has a budget and spends what they can to meet their needs. Having not bought a new machine for many many years, I was able to justify spending a little more.
I guess my point is the same as others, that we will all be happy with our own individual choices.. as soon as they are delivered to our door that is!