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What SSD Drive for those of you who upgraded did you use?

WizardHunt

WizardHunt

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 11, 2007
1,695
38
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
Hi, I am curious what SSD external HD did you use to make your own Fusion drive? Did you all go with the 256GB or 480? or 512GB? or even the 1 TB Verison SSD for $999?

I am interested in installing the 1TB SSD Lacie for $999. I already have the 256 GB but it is not large enough for me. Fills up too fast. The 1 TB is the proper size for me with the Video work I do.

Has anyone hooked up larger than 480 GB to their new iMac making their own Fusion Drive for those of you who did not opt in for the Fusion drive in the first place.

Let me know the Brand you used and the size you chose at the minimum.
 
As for which brands / models of SSD, I see lots of people liking the Samsung 840 and Samsung 840 Pro. Fast and reliable. Then either installing them internally or placing them in an external box.


Most people I know... they only put installed APPLICATIONS on the SSD, or if they're editing video/audio files then whatever it is they're working on. This way, the things where performance actually matters get the benefit of the speed.

Movies, music, etc... stuff that is measured in near-Terabytes in total, placed on a separate HDD. After all, how much performance do you really need to watch a video or listen to an MP3.

So following THAT rule of thumb, 128 or 256 GB should be big enough for most people since it's rare to have more than that installed in applications. Especially on Macs, which don't have as big of a modern-gaming library as Windows PCs (though that is improving).

Putting your entire music (or movie) collection on your SSD is a waste.
 
karpich1 said:
As for which brands / models of SSD, I see lots of people liking the Samsung 840 and Samsung 840 Pro. Fast and reliable. Then either installing them internally or placing them in an external box.


Most people I know... they only put installed APPLICATIONS on the SSD, or if they're editing video/audio files then whatever it is they're working on. This way, the things where performance actually matters get the benefit of the speed.

Movies, music, etc... stuff that is measured in near-Terabytes in total, placed on a separate HDD. After all, how much performance do you really need to watch a video or listen to an MP3.

So following THAT rule of thumb, 128 or 256 GB should be big enough for most people since it's rare to have more than that installed in applications. Especially on Macs, which don't have as big of a modern-gaming library as Windows PCs (though that is improving).

Putting your entire music (or movie) collection on your SSD is a waste.
Click to expand...


I am not trying to put my whole video library on my iMac as I couldn't if i wanted to. I have like 12 each of 2-3 TB HD full of movies... but i would like overall performance.. on whatever I access to be fast.. Music and Video yes can be run from a external HD.. but it seems that you can not completely control which goes to the SSD part of the drive unless I am missing something here..
 
Skyjamma said:
Hi thedeske. Could you expand on your comment above? How does one set this up?
Click to expand...

This is old knowledge, so it will bore many. Sorry.
Obviously, if your SSD is not large enough to hold your USER folder, you'll have to have it on a clone or have it thinned out enough for the SSD. Let's assume you have your system set up on the SSD just like the old HD. Let's also assume there is no system on the HD.
Before you go here, remember you will have 2 drives to back up instead of 1. My system SSD uses 30gb. If you want some files on the SSD for speed, no problem after the fact, but first things first.

1. Click on ‘Macintosh HD’ in the Finder and open the ‘Users’ folder. In here you will find a folder named after your shortname. This is your home folder. As it is currently your active home folder it will have a ‘house’ icon assigned to it. Copy this folder to the 2nd hardrive by simply dragging it. (The copied folder will not have the ‘house’ icon as it is not yet recognized as your active home folder. We will change this in the following steps.)

2. Open the ‘System Preferences’ application from either the Dock, the Applications folder or from the Apple menu.

3. Click on the ‘Users’ icon in the ‘System’ section.

4. After entering your password to unlock the padlock, CTL-Click (or right click) on the active admin account (from the list of user accounts in the left pane) to reveal an ‘Advanced Options’ contextual menu. Select this item.

5. You will be presented with a pane full of advanced settings (and also a warning about how you should only change these settings if you know what you are doing!). Ignore all of these settings/fields except for the ‘Home Directory’ option. This is the path that OS X uses to locate your home folder when you login. It should say: /Users/shortname

6. Click on the ‘Choose’ button, and browse to the home folder in the new location (this will be the folder you moved in Step 1 which will be named after your shortname). After you select the new location, the ‘Home directory’ path should change to something like: /Volumes/shortname.

7. OS X will continue to use the original home folder until you restart. So restart the computer and login as normal. To confirm that the new home folder is now active, browse to the folder you copied to the 2nd hardrive and check it has the ‘house’ icon assigned to it. Now that your home folder is successfully located on your 2nd drive, you can delete the original home folder in the Users folder. It should now have a generic folder icon as it is no longer the active home folder.

If you thinned your home folder to get the job done, copy things back into place (pictures, music, film, etc) on the HD.

What you choose to have on the SSD is now under your control.
 
Last edited:
thedeske said:
This is old knowledge, so it will bore many. Sorry.
Obviously, if your SSD is not large enough to hold your USER folder, you'll have to have it on a clone or have it thinned out enough for the SSD. Let's assume you have your system set up on the SSD just like the old HD. Let's also assume there is no system on the HD.
Before you go here, remember you will have 2 drives to back up instead of 1. My system SSD uses 30gb. If you want some files on the SSD for speed, no problem after the fact, but first things first.

1. Click on ‘Macintosh HD’ in the Finder and open the ‘Users’ folder. In here you will find a folder named after your shortname. This is your home folder. As it is currently your active home folder it will have a ‘house’ icon assigned to it. Copy this folder to the 2nd hardrive by simply dragging it. (The copied folder will not have the ‘house’ icon as it is not yet recognized as your active home folder. We will change this in the following steps.)

2. Open the ‘System Preferences’ application from either the Dock, the Applications folder or from the Apple menu.

3. Click on the ‘Users’ icon in the ‘System’ section.

4. After entering your password to unlock the padlock, CTL-Click (or right click) on the active admin account (from the list of user accounts in the left pane) to reveal an ‘Advanced Options’ contextual menu. Select this item.

5. You will be presented with a pane full of advanced settings (and also a warning about how you should only change these settings if you know what you are doing!). Ignore all of these settings/fields except for the ‘Home Directory’ option. This is the path that OS X uses to locate your home folder when you login. It should say: /Users/shortname

6. Click on the ‘Choose’ button, and browse to the home folder in the new location (this will be the folder you moved in Step 1 which will be named after your shortname). After you select the new location, the ‘Home directory’ path should change to something like: /Volumes/shortname.

7. OS X will continue to use the original home folder until you restart. So restart the computer and login as normal. To confirm that the new home folder is now active, browse to the folder you copied to the 2nd hardrive and check it has the ‘house’ icon assigned to it. Now that your home folder is successfully located on your 2nd drive, you can delete the original home folder in the Users folder. It should now have a generic folder icon as it is no longer the active home folder.

If you thinned your home folder to get the job done, copy things back into place (pictures, music, film, etc) on the HD.

What you choose to have on the SSD is now under your control.
Click to expand...


Ok that controls the path of your saved Home Folder and such but doing this if you have a SSD Drive hooked into your Thunderbolt port will not speed boot up time will it? Only if you created a Fusion HD with the Mac HD and a SSD drive.. . Can you shed any light on this ?
 
The conventional 2011 15" MBP's I bought for my wife myself & my brother, all have been fast & reliable with the 512 GB Samsung 840 series I installed in them. Done when just a few days old, by now they have lots of use & we're all quite pleased.
 
This is my plan on what I want to do. I will buy a Lacie SSD Drive that is 1 TB. That way I can put my entire drive on that SSD Drive and with speeds of 685 then it should fly. That is my plan to make a fusion drive for my iMac. Too bad I could not afford to buy the iMac with the built in 768 GB SSD drive but at the time I did not have that money.
 
My Western Digital failed a little after a year. I replaced it with

c26-NE-840SSD-120hero.jpg


Great drive. Super fast
 
In my 24" iMac i had to replace the HDD, so i decided to make a fusion drive.
Used a Samsung 840 250 GB SSD and a WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD, i installed the SSD in place of the super drive.
 
WizardHunt said:
This is my plan on what I want to do. I will buy a Lacie SSD Drive that is 1 TB. That way I can put my entire drive on that SSD Drive and with speeds of 685 then it should fly. That is my plan to make a fusion drive for my iMac. Too bad I could not afford to buy the iMac with the built in 768 GB SSD drive but at the time I did not have that money.
Click to expand...

Why would you use two SSD drives to create a fusion drive? The whole point of fusion is to have a small SSD drive to do the heavy tasks and then use a much less expensive spindle HDD for the files that just don't need the horsepower.

If you are buying a 1TB SSD then just run both drives separately and don't waste the time with Fusion.
 
WizardHunt said:
Ok that controls the path of your saved Home Folder and such but doing this if you have a SSD Drive hooked into your Thunderbolt port will not speed boot up time will it? Only if you created a Fusion HD with the Mac HD and a SSD drive.. . Can you shed any light on this ?
Click to expand...

Or you could make the external TB SSD drive your boot drive and use the slower internal HDD for data only.
 
After reading all of the information available on SSDs and understanding very little, I went with the Samsumg 840 Pro. There is a difference between the 840 Pro series and the regular 840 series and, based on what I read, the 840 Pro architecture was deemed to be more reliable long term based on its proven technology versus the less expensive and newer technology used in the regular 840 series. Basically, I decided that it was worth the forty dollar difference (at 256 GB) to go with the more proven techonology.

I also looked at reviews of other products and Samsung consistently was rated one of the top manufacturers of SSDs. I also have a number of HDDs from Samsung, which have proven more reliable than any other drives that I've, though I've only had one failure out of about twenty drives, that being a Western Digital, so I had no qualms about going with Samsung again.
 
MacLovin78 said:
Why would you use two SSD drives to create a fusion drive? The whole point of fusion is to have a small SSD drive to do the heavy tasks and then use a much less expensive spindle HDD for the files that just don't need the horsepower.

If you are buying a 1TB SSD then just run both drives separately and don't waste the time with Fusion.
Click to expand...

I am not using 2 SSD's . I will be using one Lacie 1 TB SSD that will be turned into fusion so that it will run everything on my computer at a faster rate, boot up time faster, And faster Access to applications including FCPX, Adobe PS CS 5 , Aperture, etc.. This way I can use my internal 3 TBHD for the data part after any rendering is done. Rendering is what takes time. On a SSD drive it would be faster. So I think i should hook up the 1 TB SSD into the internal HD and make it a Fusion Drive. Anybody want to debate me on this?
 
I need to expand a little bit about why I am using a Lacie 1 TB SSD External Hard Drive to make my Fusion. For starters, the Lacie 1 TB SSD will do speeds well over 700 MB/s reads and writes over 500 MB/s which is faster than the stock option of 1 tb fusion in the iMacs today. And I will not run out of SSD space. Thats most important. Once you fill up that SSD then you don't see any more performance gains at all until you remove those files.

See below:
From this website they mention:

CONSIDER EXTERNAL STORAGE OPTIONS:
During our benchmarking of the 27-inch iMac, we used the newest LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (with dual 256G SSDs in RAID 0 set). At 700+MB/s READ and 500+MB/s WRITE it's faster than the internal Fusion Drive. In other words, you don't have to crack open your iMac to go faster -- unless you have your heart set on having an uncluttered desk. Otherwise, there are several excellent Thunderbolt enclosures you can buy which provide extra storage speed and space for your new iMac. Don't forget you have USB 3.0 ports now. We will be testing and reporting on two new, fast USB 3.0 enclosures.

A FUSION REALITY CHECK
Though the Fusion Drive is impressive, just be aware that it has its limits. In a test we conducted on various Fusion and cached storage products, we found that the speed dropped dramatically if the transfer size exceeded the unused space on the flash module "fused" to the hard disk drive. In the case of the 1TB Fusion Drive, the drop in speed was triggered when we attempted to transfer 88GB of HD video. That is an extreme test and hopefully won't affect the average user.

And this is exactly why I feel a 128 GB or 256 GB SSD drive is not large enough for my needs. Even a 512 GB would be short lived with all the video work I do. Thats why I feel a 1 TB SSD option, (though expensive) is my best option now. I can handle larger files with no slowdown whatsoever.

Anybody Disagree?
 
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