hi guys, I just bought a refurbished iMac, and I ask for a SSD drive, NO fusion drive.
But I'm a little confused because About my Mac and Storage don't say the same thing...
It does say Fusion drive, but it say SSD too...
Here's my screenshot, please help me out finding if it only SSD or Fusion drive.
Thank you all!
What year is the iMac? That can make a difference in what is going on.
And this is not an Apple refurb. Although these are the English-language forums and I don't read much French, your screenshot from System information shows that, probably during the refurb process, the mechanical part of the Fusion drive was replaced with an aftermarket SSD ( Samsung 860 EVO 1TB). Apple would never use a branded third-party drive.
Apple's Fusion uses two separate devices—a small blade-type SSD socketed to the logic board, and a larger mechanical hard drive connected by cable and residing in a traditional drive bay.
To make one Fusion drive, Apple's links the two via software. It appears the software link survived the aftermarket install of the Samsung SSD.
As long as the Samsung is working, this should be a reasonably fast arrangement. I prefer Crucial and OWC SSD's over Samsung but yours will work. It will not be as fast as a factory SSD because the 860EVO is limited to about 600MB/sec transfer speeds but a blade SSD can do 2800MB/sec.
For the standpoint of reliability, I worry more about someone other than Apple going inside. Were the original Fusion drive working properly before, it was potentially faster than putting a 6GB/sec SSD in the main drive bay based on drive performance reports I've collected.
Best practice for aftermarket conversion to pure SSD is to replace Apple's small blade SSD with a larger one, then "breaking" the Fusion link and leaving the mechanical hard drive for extra storage.
The only way we can know if your combo is working at reasonable speed is for you to get a utility like Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (here in the Mac App Store) and post both the read and write speeds. That may reveal that the conversion is delivering good performance.
Fusion drive is part spinning, part SSD in one mechanism.
The SSD mechanism is a small mechanism to carry just the base operating system.
When in Disk Utility, you can use View menu to show "All Devices" to ensure that you see each component.
Until last year, iMacs, except the Pro usually used Fusion drives unless they were build to order otherwise.
hi Jack,
can you help me out a little more please? i'm still a little lost.
I wanted only SSD because i saw that fusion drive technology is not really reliable in time, it could break, and won’t last as long as an SSD.
i don't care about having a very fast machine, i'm still working on my 2009 Imac (3,06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) with HDD who's working fine, the only problem is that i can't update the ios anymore and i needed it as i'm working on websites, and need to update browsers.
If i understand the configuration is the fusion drive technology (2 discs) but they're both SSD. (view my previous screenshots)
My question is that : is it better to get only one SSD, instead of the fusion drive, i'm asking about reliability in time, as i don't need a really fast machine.
If i could i'll stay with my old Imac who's working fine since 2009, and i do have more trust in old machine.
Thank for your help
The 2009 iMacs were strictly platter built-in technology, and internal drives on those were not user replaceable. An external Firewire SATA adapter to SSD is possible for the best speed for those machines.
Fusion Drives did not come along for iMacs until 2012.
They are not SSD except in their first 128 GB.
The rest of the data storage are platter built in to the same mechanism.
In 2020, Apple finally released for the regular iMacs a true SSD internally.
Thank you all for your helpful answers.
Now i understand all the fusion drive thing. I went to the store and they did change my Imac.
It is not an Apple store, apple became way too expensive for me, so i went to a"regular" refurbish shop. Not the better solution, but now i do have an all SSD configuration. ANd it's seems to work fine.
Thank you all again :)
Hi Zuko Dalton,
Yes. It is a Fusion Drive. Please contract the store or seller if you aren't happy with it.
Cheers,
Jack
Thank you both for the help :)
i will contact the store tomorrow!
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MSTG800U3K/ offers Firewire 800 that the iMac 2009 can connect to with any 2.5" SATA SSD storage mechanism.
How do I know if my iMac is just SSD or fusion drive
