Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

I am planning of buying a Imac 27 and am coming from a PC.

All of my photos are loaded onto external drives, and have almost filled a 2 t drive with photos. I have back up of all my photos on a second external, that is a mirror image of the first drive. I also have have one that is a mirror of the first drive that is kept off line and kept in another location. How well will the fussion drive work vs a straight ssd drive with my current set up? I am retired, and this is a major expense for me, and I do hope that this set up will give me years of service. So, should I buy the fussion with a 3 T hard drive, or the 256 flash drive. Now if I were on one of the photo web sites and read a question about should I buy this or that camera, I would say that person needs to do more research. Well, that is what I am doing here. The people on Dpreview say I am going to love my Imac 27, I just need to know more about Apple. I have used PC for 25 years as a CAD designer. My IT person is going to flip out once he knows I have moved to a Apple computer. He will have no more work.

iMac, moving from PC to Imac

Posted on Sep 13, 2013 8:01 AM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Sep 13, 2013 2:01 PM

Only you can determine if youi want to bother with a fusion HD. I don't and I'd go with the cheapest option for max storage: 3TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm [Add $150.00]. So, for starters, peruse http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1408, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2518,and http://www.apple.com/support/macbasics/

7 replies

Sep 13, 2013 2:08 PM in response to Chuck Pike

The big boost of the Fusion Drive is in the startup speed due to the SSD portion. That will not have much affect on interaction with an external hard drive.


I agree with Baltwo...it is smarter to put money in a large internal higher speed hard drive. The iMac is a great machine, and the speed of the faster hard drive makes for a great overall experience.


Only thing I would add, since the 27 inch allows for user ram upgrade, you get more ram for your money going to Mac suppliers like OWC, http://www.macsales.com and Crucial, http://www.crucial.com

Sep 29, 2013 10:26 AM in response to Ralph Landry1

I am in a similar situation. My 2007 iMac HDD is dying and it is time for an upgrade anyway. I want the simplest solution to store and access music files and raw and edited photo and video files in addition to day to day computing activities for two users Despite all the positive feedback for fusion and internal SSDs, I was thinking of getting the 3TB internal drive and putting everything on there and then using a thunderbolt external drive or drives for a time machine and/or bootable clone backup. I currently have all media file on an external drive, but backing up from the iMac internal files and external media files at the same time is awkward at best. The internal 3TB to external would seem to be the simplest solution especially since I also need a small boot camp partition. It would also limit making the thing like an octopus. An internal SSD only (256 or 512) would seem to work, but then I need two external setups for sure, one for media and a duplicate for backup. Boot speed is not a huge problem. Based on what was recommended above, sounds like I should follow the same advice and get the internal 7200 HDD and backup directly to an external setup. Any thoughts or better suggestions?

Sep 29, 2013 11:18 AM in response to Chuck Pike

All this advice to buy the cheapest “big” HD doesn’t make sense to me. You are buying a $2K+ computer (that is also sealed) – not a $500 Dell or HP machine. While it possible, it’s not easy or cheap to upgrade the HD after you take it home. Get the 1GB fusion drive option and you won’t believe have fast it is. You can then buy an external drive for a backup and storage.

I am planning of buying a Imac 27 and am coming from a PC.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.