Which Storage option is best on a 27" iMAC

[530Buckeye]

I am planning on buying a new iMAC 27" in the coming months. I have noticed that they offer the standard 1TB ATA Drive as well as a 1TB/2TB Fusion Drive. My goal is to move a fairly large music collection and house that on the computer as well as wife using for school, web surfing etc.. Which drive would be best for this ? Are the Fusion drives worth the expense? on that note, would it also be a consideration to upgrade it to the Flash storage and then use an external drive for the music? new to MAC and my wife and I are switching laptops and desktop out from PC to MAC. thanks for the input

 

[chscag]

I am planning on buying a new iMAC 27" in the coming months. I have noticed that they offer the standard 1TB ATA Drive as well as a 1TB/2TB Fusion Drive. My goal is to move a fairly large music collection and house that on the computer as well as wife using for school, web surfing etc.. Which drive would be best for this ? Are the Fusion drives worth the expense? on that note, would it also be a consideration to upgrade it to the Flash storage and then use an external drive for the music? new to MAC and my wife and I are switching laptops and desktop out from PC to MAC. thanks for the input

If you can afford it, go with a large Flash drive instead of a Fusion Drive or the standard SATA 7200 RPM drive. You can always offload your music collection to an external drive. Since an iMac is a desktop machine, attaching an external drive or two is not inconvenient. Apple's new Fusion drives consist of a very small Flash drive and a standard 7200 RPM SATA drive fused together. The Fusion drives are faster than a standard 7200 RPM SATA drive but not near as fast as a pure Flash drive.

 

[satcomer]

There is the Apple Support document Back up your iTunes Library to an external drive.

I say watch this video on how to move your iTunes Library. It's more up to date.

 

[Fishrrman]

You will get all kinds of replies over a question like this.

If you have LOTS of stuff to migrate to the new computer, a fusion drive would probably be your best option.

BUT --
Be aware that the "1tb fusion" option has only a 24gb "flash drive portion" (along with a 1tb HDD).

The 2tb fusion drive has a 128gb flash drive AND a 2tb HDD.

I sense the overall performance, both when new and "long term", will be much better with the 2tb fusion option.

The price differential isn't much but in this case it's well worth paying for...

 

[phrehdd]

I'll just throw some peanuts into the gallery here -

I am not a fan of fusion drives though I can see some positives about them. I prefer SSD and as such would only consider an SSD for my main drive. Given you have a desktop computer, you are in a great position to get an SSD (ideally 256 or larger) and opt for external drives on an as need basis.

The above is how I would do it for my* needs. You might be having a different set of requirements but hope you consider the suggestion.