would a Samsung T5 usb 3 drive be a faster startup drive than my internal 1gb fusion?

[madeirabhoy]

i get really confused by these things, I know SSD is faster but when its external through usb is it still faster? I know thunderbolt would be better but im not wanting to commit a lot of cash and I see a 500gb Samsung t5 is €104 euro. would this be a waste of money or speed up my 2017 imac

 

[maflynn]

With the fusion drive, your OS and start up files will be on the SSD portion of the Fusion drive, so I'd say that the startup will be marginally faster using the fusion drive then the T5.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

How "fast" is your fusion drive RIGHT NOW?
Do you know?
Aside: if you don't know, how can you know if an external SSD will be faster?

Download BlackMagic Speed Test and post your read/write results.
Then we can offer better advice.

 

[madeirabhoy]

thanks, so basically a waste of money then.

so would a thunderbolt 3 SSD be faster than internal?

OP:

How "fast" is your fusion drive RIGHT NOW?
Do you know?
Aside: if you don't know, how can you know if an external SSD will be faster?

Download BlackMagic Speed Test and post your read/write results.
Then we can offer better advice.

 

[chrfr]

thanks, so basically a waste of money then.

so would a thunderbolt 3 SSD be faster than internal?

View attachment 894029

The Blackmagic app is not always useful for testing Fusion drives. The Fusion drive won't sustain that sort of performance while even a USB SSD will be much more consistent.
Yes, a Thunderbolt 3 SSD will be faster.

 

[Fishrrman]

External USB3 SSD will give reads around 430MBps and writes in the 375MBps range.
Compare these to what the OP is getting RIGHT NOW with the built-in fusion drive...

 

[chrfr]

External USB3 SSD will give reads around 430MBps and writes in the 375MBps range.
Compare these to what the OP is getting RIGHT NOW with the built-in fusion drive...

Fusion drives don’t benchmark reliably because of how data is moved to and from the SSD. The entry level Fusion Drives only have a 32GB or 24GB SSD, which rapidly fills up and leads to quite slow performance. My personal experience with these particular Fusion Drives is that a USB SSD will feel faster overall.
Refer to this article for more information about the inherent challenges in benchmarking Fusion Drives: https://www.anandtech.com/show/6679/a-month-with-apples-fusion-drive/6
Also consider that at the time of the Anandtech article, the standard Fusion Drive used a 128GB SSD, so performance has gotten worse with the change to APFS and the much smaller SSD.