Fusion drive or not

Question

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Fusion drive or not

I'm going to be ordering the new 27 inch iMac in the next few months. I'm debating whether to go with the Fusion drive option when I do order.

Boot times won't be an issue has I'll be sleeping the iMac, rather than shutting it down everytime I've finished with it (as I was tolded on here that's its best to do this the vast amount of the time).

Main uses for me would be:

Surfing, emailing, iTunes, burning to cd and DVD with Toast Titanium, bit of photo editing, bit of video converting of AVI to DVD conversion, using the Screen Flow application.

I was wondering if I would see much benefit in having the Fusion drive over just the standard 1TB hard drive?

Thanks in advance.

Windows Vista, iPad (3rd Gen) 32GB iPhone 5 32GB

Posted on Dec 13, 2012 12:29 AM

Reply

Answer 1

noumax

Level 1

19 points

Dec 13, 2012 2:58 AM in response to tal1971

Be careful that you won't have DVD unit on new IMAC (so burning CD...), you may consider to have an external (thunderbolt, maybe), drive instead of fusion drive.

Reply

Answer 2

Dec 13, 2012 3:27 AM in response to tal1971

Access time to start Apps, system, etc.would be much faster with the Fusion drive. Routine tasks like online sites opening while surfing the Internet, and such, would be no faster.

Hope this helps 🙂

Reply

Answer 3

roam

Level 6

13,631 points

Dec 13, 2012 4:25 AM in response to tal1971

What is the difference in price between standard and ordering the fusion extra?

Reply

Answer 4

Dec 13, 2012 4:45 AM in response to roam

The US difference in price between the 1 TB standard hard drive and the 1 TB Fusion hard drive is $250.

Reply

Answer 5

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 13, 2012 5:23 AM in response to noumax

I'm planning on getting the external Super Drive as well when I place my order.

Reply

Answer 6

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 13, 2012 5:24 AM in response to Radiation Mac

Thanks for the help Radiation Mac.

Reply

Answer 7

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 13, 2012 5:26 AM in response to roam

In the UK it's an extra £200 to get the Fusion Drive option.

Reply

Answer 8

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 13, 2012 5:30 AM in response to tal1971

Another thing for me to consider too, is the 27 inch iMac has the 7200 rpm hard drive as opposed to the 21 inch having the 5400 rpm, so I wondered if this would narrow the gap (on the 27 inch) between having the standard hard drive and the Fusion Drive due to the faster spinning hard drive been perhaps a bit faster than the 5400 rpm drive?

Reply

Answer 9

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 13, 2012 6:08 AM in response to tal1971

A few other things I've thought about with regards to the Fusion Drive.

The Fusion Drive is 128gb in size. I was wondering, once the Fusion drive is full, any other Applications I would be installing would then go on the hard drive. So if for example I had an Application on the Fusion Drive that I'd either not used for a while or a newly installed Application that I'd began using more than some other Application that was resident on the Fusion Drive. Would this Application then be transferred to the Fusion Drive, and an older lesser used Application would then be moved to the hard drive?

Also. I believe the Mac OS is installed on the Fusion Drive, so when I used Time Machine, would this backup the OS, data, applications that were resident on the Fusion Drive?

Thanks everyone for the help.

Reply

Answer 10

roam

Level 6

13,631 points

Dec 13, 2012 2:06 PM in response to tal1971

Thanks Radiation Mac, I guess in Aust. it would be slightly higher as Apple stuff usually is, despite the stronger $AUD. I think it is a bit pricey.

tal1971: Fusion drive is a clever technology but a 7200rpm HDD is also superfast for disk technology and would run like the wind. I'd spend the £200 on something else.

Reply

Answer 11

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 13, 2012 2:36 PM in response to roam

Thanks for the suggestion roam, much appreciated.

Reply

Answer 12

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 15, 2012 2:18 PM in response to tal1971

I believe that the Mac OS is installed on the Fusion Drive, so when I used Time Machine, would this backup the OS, data, applications that were resident on the Fusion Drive or would Time Machine only backup whatever were on the hard drive?

Also. I'm planning on installing Parallels Desktop 8 and Windows 7 64 bit. Would the Fusion Drive give me the same benefits (faster access etc that I would see whilst using the Mac OS side) when I was using Parallels Desktop 8 and Windows 7?

The Fusion Drive is 128gb in size. I was wondering, once the Fusion drive is full, any other Applications I would be installing would then go on the hard drive. So if for example I had an Application on the Fusion Drive that I'd either not used for a while or a newly installed Application that I'd began using more than some other Application that was resident on the Fusion Drive. Would this Application then be transferred to the Fusion Drive, and an older lesser used Application would then be moved to the hard drive?

Thanks 🙂

Reply

Answer 13

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 16, 2012 12:17 AM in response to tal1971

I'm planning on maybe using Carbon Copy Cloner in addition to Time Machine.

If I did get an iMac with a Fusion Drive installed, I'm wondering if CCC will still be able to provide a bootable backup with an external hard drive, from a Mac that has a Fusion Drive installed, but then again if the Fusion Drive and hard drive are seen as one, then it should, but I'm not 100 percent sure on this?

Reply

Answer 14

tal1971 Author

Level 2

302 points

Dec 16, 2012 1:46 AM in response to tal1971

The Fusion Drive is 128gb in size.

I was wondering, once the Fusion drive is full, any other Applications I would be installing would then go on the hard drive. So if for example I had an Application on the Fusion Drive that I'd either not used for a while or a newly installed Application that I'd began using more than some other Application that was resident on the Fusion Drive. Would this Application then be transferred to the Fusion Drive, and an older lesser used Application would then be moved to the hard drive?

Reply

Answer 15

pjleeson

Level 1

24 points

Dec 16, 2012 6:48 AM in response to tal1971

I wouldn't get one without it.

I installed the OWC SSD in my 2009 27" iMac and it is amazingly fast.

Programs are on the SSD and picture and music libraries are on the HDD.

No DVD, but don't miss it.

Not as automatic as the fusion drive, but still very slick.

Reply