1TB Fusion vs 512GB SSD... any experience?

Hi IKrupp

Making a decision of whether to go FUSION or SSD is very simple and it has nothing to

do with what you will be using your iMac for.

Everything boils down to one simple question how do they perform, the simple answer is

that a Fusion Drive is crap, what did you say, I said that the new fusion drives are crap,

after 6 weeks of heavy use with 3 Fusion drives I can safely say that even if you only have

50GB of data on your Fusion Drive the system still is unable to push everything to the high

speed SSD and as soon as you have more than 128GB of data that you use all the time

on your Fusion Drive, you will not be happy with the performance.

A task that requires the use of your drive and takes 18 seconds with an SSD can take

between 24 and 45 seconds with the Fusion Drive.

If you could dictate where all the apps and files that you use all the time went I would say

go Fusion Drive, but you simply cannot.

What is the solution, external storage, firstly, external USB 3.0 powered HDD are great,

Lacie rugged drive, awesome.

Secondly, the ability to dictate where you put your data really improves performance, the

idea of a Fusion Drive is great but the system simple does not move your data around

efficiently.

We have just updated 4 work stations and have gone SSD internally all the way, the size

of your SSD will be determined by the size of the data you frequently move around we

went with 2 x 256GB and 2 x 512GB SSD’s

And finally for those who are claiming that in the real world the SSD is not faster than a

Fusion Drive, these people are not using large amounts of data.

The only problem with SSD’s and Fusion Drives is security and until this is solved HDD’s

will still be in our lives, the speed of 135MB’s on a HDD USB 3.0 or thunderbolt powered

drive is still OK.

Only sorry I did not see your question earlier.

K.

In my testing of the DIY Fusion Drive I created to be so close to the SSD by itself as to be smaller then I was able to measure. It I worked at it very hard I did manage in a test case to load the SSD to the point wehre it started using the disk drive but I have not been able to repeat the when I am using my DIY Fusion Drive to do work.

Allan

My results did not reflect that. My hardware was different. I was using an Accelsior PCIe SSD-E2. First I tested it along for my base numbers. The I created the DIY Fusion Drive and ran the test again. The drop in performace before the SSD was full was smaller the the variabilty of my reading which what I cassify as unmeasurable.

Allan

I have a 2011 iMac that has both a SSD (256) and an internal HD (1 TB). It's blazingly fast. I keep only the most needed documents and applications on the SSD and the rest on the regular HD. I have about 90GB still free on the SDD. I do have my iPhoto libraries on the SSD but have my iTunes library on the internal HD.

You can do the same with an external HD that has Thunderbolt or a FW 800 port (use with a Thunderbolt to FW adapter from Apple) and get the same performance as I'm getting.

I've not had any experience with the fusion drive so can't comment on if it would be as fast as booting from my SSD.

Whatever combination you decide on I recommend you get another external HD about 2X the size of your working drives to use with Time Machine to backup all of your drives.

OT

I have been running my DIY Fusion Drive for over 6 months now. I did another check on to find out it it was slowing down yet. So far I can measure any slowdown.

Allan

First off, I really appreciate this thread, as I'm due to purchase a new iMac this summer. Thanks to everyone.

Can you tell me how full your fusion drive is? I'd assume that if you have less than 128gb of use, it is all on the SSD. Is this a correct assumption? Seeing the performance change when you are well over the 128gb mark would an interesting statistic to know.

I have a Drobo 5D, so I was leaning toward the pure SSD option. I don't know if I can swing the extra $$ so the fusion is still in the running.

Hi Boerne,

When we tested the Fusion Drives we tested the 3TB and the 1TB, the total amount

of data placed on the drives did not exceed 250GB.

The performance drop is pretty straight forward as soon as you need to use the HDD

you will be looking at a maximum read and write of 135MBs which is still OK but when

you get used to 680MBs from the SSD is gets a little irritating.

Don’t get me wrong I like the idea of a Fusion Drive but they just don’t work as well as

I had hoped, Apple needs to give us back the ability to choose where the data is stored.

My personal setup is 256SSD with 2 External Lacie Rugged Drives (USB POWERED)

(1 x 256SSD and 1 x 500GB) so I guess this is kind of a Fusion setup. I only get a

maximum speed of 400MBs from the Rugged SSD but it is still quick enough.

Personally I do not like having a 500GB SSD in the machine because its expensive.

Good luck dude.

The only time that I was able to get my DIY Fusion Drive combining an Accelsior PCIe SSD and 1 TB disk drive was during test. So during my normal work on the Mac Pro I have not been able to see that.

Allan

It was a major father's day... 27" iMac with 3.5ghz i7, 3tb Fusion, upgraded graphics. I am one happy dad!

Here is my first impression and lessons learned:

The fusion drive is, out of the box, just as fast as an SSD because it is all on the SSD.

Install your apps first, and in the order of precedence. Unless you heavily use a data file that will fit on the SSD. Putting your apps on first will effectively put them on the SSD and you won't have to wait for it to optimize itself.

I'm assuming it is optimizing itself because it seems faster each day. I restored large amounts of data first and then installed iMovie and iPhoto updates. These apps have gotten faster each day -- they start faster it seems. Comparing it to my MBAir which is all flash.

Thank you for some common sense. Having labored through this discussion its nice to see some thinking instead of throwing hardware, irrelevant benchmarks and hacks at a problem actually works quite well.

With permission from "Mom," I sold my father's day present on eBay and got the 5K iMac. Why?

First and foremost, I wanted the display. (It's awesome.)

But the relevancy to this thread was the use of the Fusion drive. My June 2014 iMac had the 3TB Fusion drive. It was very fast out of the box and seemed to get faster the first few weeks I used it. Then it seemed to get slower. I would get some untimely "pauses" -- Technically I do not know why, but it was almost as if the hard drive was asleep and needed to spin up from 0 RPM. Side by side, my 2014 iMac with the fastest i7 available at the time was no faster than my 2011 MacBook Air with a much slower i7. So, I attributed this to the Fusion. (Water under the bridge, would have still sold it if it wasn't.)

Anyway, I got a SSD in the new iMac. It's blazingly fast. I don't expect that to change, as the speed of my MacBook Air has not changed. So the convenience of a massive fusion drive does not outweigh the performance hit, in my opinion.

Boerne,

What size SSD did you get?

After being a content PC builder/user for 15 years (no problems but I like the iMacs) I bought the 2013 27" iMac loaded up (3TB fusion), but had to return three of them due to defective screens (yes bad luck or I'm OCD about dead pixels, and yellow colour banding and a huge smudge on my third one - inside the glass).

Now I need a new PC badly as mine is 10 years old (still works great though with Windows 7 though!). I don't necessarily NEED a 5k iMac but would like one.

I know I want to get the 27" with i7, 16GB (to start), m295x 4GB

But I'm unsure about the HDD. For the short period of time I had the iMac last year, I realized I'm going to keep all my pictures on external USB 3 drives and only install apps on the internal so at the time 3TB seemed like overkill maybe.

I don't game much now (mainly because my PC is too old), but would like to once in a while and I MIGHT bootcamp Windows 7 with one game loaded at a time (to take a break).

My main use is photography, mainly Photoshop, I often work in 100++ layers composites (can still do it on my 10 year old PC with 2GB ram in CC 2014 believe it or not. Not fun, but doable).

So would a 512GB SSD be enough? It's slightly more than the 3TB Fusion (too bad). I so wish the Fusions had 256GB SSD (bet the next ones will) and I wouldn't hesitate then. I would have to run Windows off the spinning HDD but that's fine.

Currently on my PC with Windows 7 x64 being installed since it was released, I have about 200GB data used on my C drive (I keep all my files like pictures on external and one internal HDD)

I got the 1TB SSD. I could get by with 512, but my budget allowed for the 1TB, so I got it. I'm very happy with the decision. I keep the mass of "stuff" on a Drobo 5D. But Photoshop Elements, FCPX, iMovie, iPhoto, Excel, and Word all work with documents on the SSD.

I don't know the implications of boot camping the SSD, but this would add to the argument that the 1TB is needed.

Wow, 1TB SSD would be so nice! I think it's a $700 premium for that option here.
The 512 SSD just barely fits my budget, but it would be a shame to spend all that to be worrying about filling it up all the time.