Which is better SSD or DIY Fusion?

[krypticos]

Hello all

i have a 240gb ssd on its way along with a optical drive caddy. i have a early 2011 macbook pro 15". i know the main drive bay is the sata 3 and the optical still uses sata 2 so im installing the ssd in the main area and the platter drive in the optical. on to my question.

im wondering if using the ssd and the hdd separate and managing the data myself is better than fusion. now it i did go this route can the documents and downloads folder be relocated to the hdd like how you can under windows?

main reason is i have read that fusion will write and fill the ssd then as it gets full it will start using the hdd. is this correct?

i was hoping it would have the os on the ssd and then write everything to the hdd then only what you use frequently gets wrote to the ssd.

i have several macs but this is the first i will be having an ssd in mainly because im spoiled by my gaming desktop and miss the speed. haha

thanks for your time.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

im wondering if using the ssd and the hdd separate and managing the data myself is better than fusion. now it i did go this route can the documents and downloads folder be relocated to the hdd like how you can under windows?

Absolutely.

main reason is i have read that fusion will write and fill the ssd then as it gets full it will start using the hdd. is this correct?

Exactly. And as you use your machine, the files/applications you open the most will be stored on the SSD, while lesser used files are moved to the HDD.

i have several macs but this is the first i will be having an ssd in mainly because im spoiled by my gaming desktop and miss the speed. haha

If you want to make sure you always get the highest speed, then you should keep your drives seperate, and put things where you want them - Ie. games and system on the SSD.

 

[leman]

Let me put it like this: I have bought an iMac with a Fusion Drive and a week later I asked Apple to exchange it for an SSD model. The Fusion Drive is very nice and everything, but it still doesn't compare with a pure SSD. I am too spoiled by SSDs now, I can't have these micro delays.

 

[maflynn]

The advantage of fusion drives is you get storage in addition to SSD speeds (for some files/folders). OSX moves the highly used files/folders to the SSDs and the other stuff to the hard drive.

If you're on an SSD, then everything will be fast, on the Fusion drive only some of the stuff will be fast.

 

[Lucille Carter]

I agree with other posters and the Fusion drive is great for people who need lots of storage. If not the pure SSD is the way to go if you have the funds. I have the 512GB drive in my new 2013 rMBPro and it is awesome.

 

[filmak]

Imho I think that is a lot better to have separate ssd and hd drives and manage them as you want. You can move your folders to hd and you can have better control over your system this way. Also have in mind that with no fusion method if a drive is damaged you will have a problem only with this one, if you have fusion one drive fails and both are lost.

Anyway always make backups.

 

[leman]

Imho I think that is a lot better to have separate ssd and hd drives and manage them as you want. You can move your folders to hd and you can have better control over your system this way.

Well, (in theory at least) the Fusion Drive can optimise the data layout much better than you ever could - unless you have some very special data access habits which the system can't learn. The reason for that is that the Fusion Drive works at the per-block base - it only moves frequently accessed parts of files, not the files themselves. E.g. with manual management you would move the entire application to the SSD, while the Fusion Drive usually only needs to move a small bit of application data to get most of the performance benefit. This way, you will run out of useful SSD space faster than the Fusion Drive should.