What is faster writing to fusion or external ssd USB 3.0?

[MyAppleWorld]

Hi all,

I am thinking about my hard disk options on a new iMac I plan on purchasing tomorrow.
I just can't decide between getting fusion or ssd.

Will it be faster to write to fusion drive or external usb 3? I will mainly be editing high res photos.


Also If I get ssd and use another external usb 3 ssd will I see delays opening finder ? At the moment I get a huge delay on my MacBook when a usb 2 disk is plugged in.

 

[ivoruest]

Fusion should be faster. There should not be delays but it depends on your disks amount of data/available free space.

 

[vickar]

Fusion drive will be faster, but only until all the data to be written would fit on its SSD-drive part. Once it's filled, the Fusion will keep it free a relatively small part of the SSD-drive (just around 5 GB, but may depend on SSD size).

As for the Photo editing task, IMHO you'd better to go with SSD. However, with Fusion there is another trick you may consider. You may boot to Recovery and manually create separate partitions on both SSD and mechanical drives, and use both separately as two independent hard drives.

At least that was my decision after trying Fusion on my mini '12 (bought SSD kit and 3rd-party Samsung SSD), and MBP 13 non-Retina (replaced DVD with the same Samsung SSD from mini).

The only difference with the stock Fusion from Apple is that it comes with small 128 GB SSD-drive, whereas I bought the 256 GB which was (and still generally is) sufficient for my needs.

Regarding the Finder opening delay, it only may happen due to external drive is put to sleep by the OS. You may want to disable putting the hard drives to sleep in the Energy Saver in the System Preferences app.

 

[JustMartin]

Hi all,

I am thinking about my hard disk options on a new iMac I plan on purchasing tomorrow.
I just can't decide between getting fusion or ssd.

Will it be faster to write to fusion drive or external usb 3? I will mainly be editing high res photos.


Also If I get ssd and use another external usb 3 ssd will I see delays opening finder ? At the moment I get a huge delay on my MacBook when a usb 2 disk is plugged in.

Fusion Drive should be faster. But, it does depend to some extent on how big your pictures are and how often you edit them. FD keeps a 4 gig area free for new files. So, if you copy more than 4 gig of photos in one go, I would expect the initial part of the copy to be quick and then it will slow down to local hard disk speeds for the rest. After that, I expect editing each photo will cause it to be allocated to the SSD portion of the drive. You don't say what you're planning in terms of drive size. The new 1TB Fusion drives come with a 24Gb SSD, the 2TB with 128Gb, if you want to go for Fusion, I would recommend the latter.

 

[MyAppleWorld]

Thanks peeps

I've decided to get the 512gb ssd and use additional external ssd storage if required. I've had an ssd MacBook for a few years and I just can't risk going back to a mechanical drive - no matter how good fusion is.

 

[vickar]

Thanks peeps

I've decided to get the 512gb ssd and use additional external ssd storage if required. I've had an ssd MacBook for a few years and I just can't risk going back to a mechanical drive - no matter how good fusion is.

Right decision, especially after JustMartin's notice of 24 GB SSD in new 1TB Fusion – it's next to nothing due to SSD speed nature (the more the volume, the faster the drive). I'm going to chose same config for my new '16 rMBP 13