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

Boerne,

Since your purchase in late Oct., any complaints or comments?

I'm considering purchasing later this year as I'll need the write-offs and want to wait for the next gen. also. I'll be using the machine for PP in PS/LR and occasional video in FCP X. I just want the most speed I can get since I'm coming from the MP world and since most upgrades are not user DIY, I need to make the right decisions from the get go.

Sorry for crashing this post so late but has anybody have any idea were bootcamp stores win 7 and runs from on the fusion drive? is it stored on the SSD part or the HDD part of the fusion drive.

You really should start your own post rather then hijacking this one.

I have a similar dilemma- purchased the new Mac Mini and user-upgraded to a Crucial CT512MX100SSD1 512GB SSD, runs beautifully but for some reason on one single isolated occasion the mac showed the folder/?. Restarted & all was fine, has been ever since. But i need to take the mini out of the UK for a couple years, where I wont be able to easily fix any issues, should they arise. Has anyone seen this issue on user-upgraded 2014 Mac Minis?

I'm thinking that i'll be safer with an Apple factory config, and considering the Fusion drive. I realise that SSD is overall faster but I have the latest 2015 mbp which is likely to be used on more demanding tasks, video editing etc. so I can afford a slight decline in HDD performance on the mini.

Any thoughts?

BTW Its my virgin post, thanks for reading!

Tony,

My apologies for the late response. Somehow I missed your post on April 1st.

No regrets at all. I love the machine. I am very happy I got the 1TB SSD vs. 512.

There is a hitch if you have massive amounts of data. I had a Drobo 5D connected via Thunderbolt. This occasionally brought things to a halt for the drives to spin up. Some of this was my own doing. I put shortcuts in the Finder sidebar to folders on the Drobo. iTunes library on the Drobo. Photo library on the Drobo. Etc.

I undid all this and pared things down to where all my normal work is on the internal SSD. It's very fast. All the time. The Drobo is connected to another machine. One can only hope the price comes down and capacity goes up on SSDs.

Mikey,

Welcome. If you are using the Mini as a server, accessing it via your network, then I'd put the biggest drives in it you can get. If you are using it as desktop, I'd recommend a factory SSD if you can swing it. If you have more data than your SSD budget, then the SSD could be too frustrating, so I'd go with the Fusion.

Hope this helps.

Boerne, thanks, better late than never. I'm really looking forward to my next purchase as I'm currently working on an i5 Mini after the sale of my MP.

Just curious, after your drives would spin-up was there any further lag caused by the Drobo? How often would the Drobo sleep? Could you simply have it not sleep during work hours and have gained all your speed back? I have an external Seagate 4TB, USB 3 that I considered using, yet obviously it's going to slow the machine down if your Drobo Thunderbolt did. I better rethink and research my file library setup. I've considered the same Drobo, but now scratching my head. It's mainly images and LR/PS that I'll be using the machine for, but an occasional video now and then via FCPX & Motion. I'm not a patient person, but can no longer afford a MP. 😢

It is all or none with the Drobo drive spin down. You either turn the feature on or off. You can't set a specific delay time. I'd turn it off when working and it really helped. But if you use the machine sporadically during the day, the spin down feature can be pretty annoying. Chances are it will have to spin up when you come back to it. I just hated to have it sitting their spinning all day (and all night if I forgot about it).

You can put an SSD in the Drobo 5D. I have not tried this, but I would imagine this would help significantly. It has a separate bay on the bottom for what I believe they recommend to be a 128gb SSD.

Depending on how you setup the Drobo, it will be very fast connected to Thunderbolt. I frequently use it with FCPX and it is more than fast enough.

If I had it to do over again, I would have gotten a Synology NAS. I don't have enough files that need the capacity and the speed of the Drobo DAS. I think the Synology has a better OS and more features you can't get on a DAS.

OK Gang! I've read (but, not always understood) this whole thread. Hopefully, this post is going in the right place.

I am a 73 year-old who mainly does genealogy work/research on my early 2009 24" iMac. I have 12,000+ photos in Photo (hope to pare that down). I upgraded the RAM to the max of 8 GB right after Christmas. It has a 650GB HD and I still have about 120GB of space left. I have a new LaCie 3 TB external HD partitioned to 1TB for a CCC clone and 2TB for external storage. I also have a 500GB Time Capsule (2009-bought same time as iMac) which fills up often. The iMac works okay but, even with the RAM upgrade, it's slow. I see the spinning rainbow beachball a lot! I will be buying a new iMac in the Fall. It will probably be the lower end 27" with Retina display (unless Apple comes out with something newer & better that I can afford). This will probably be my last Mac (unless I win the lottery-LOL!). Now, do I want the Serial drive, Fusion drive or Flash drive? Any help would be appreciated!

Since this is a brand new topic stuck onto an old thread it may not get much attention. I suggest you copy your text and then start a new thread so people see it as a new topic. I’ll be glad to reply there.

Thanks dwb. I have started a new thread and tried to delete the message here.

Hope this isn't too late for you... if $ isn't an issue but the SSD. You can't go wrong having an SSD... I have a late 2009 i7 iMac and because I'm so used to an SSD in my macbook pro, it always seems slow.

Hope this helps.

Ed

This was a great read and I gained a lot of information. I did not read here though about applications. The truth is startup is much faster and writing is much faster, but for performance while you are working I would think the best investment is RAM. I am new to MACs and have been looking at them for a while since I like Apple products.

From what I understand MACs have moved to a UNIX/Linux type operating system and having worked on UNIX/Linux since 1995 I know these OS's load the application into storage (RAM) when they start up and do not read files unless the data is moved out of RAM or it needs something on the hard drive. So the best way I would think to decide is based on your applications needs.

It would be some work but look at minimum requirements of the applications you are using and add 50% to them. Based on this total compared to your RAM should give you an idea of how much it will write to disk. Remember this is the applications running at the same time so look at your favorite applications..

I am leaning toward a fusion with 32 Gig of RAM, but I really like the SSD.

ChildOfGod4ever wrote:

The truth is startup is much faster and writing is much faster, but for performance while you are working I would think the best investment is RAM.

I am leaning toward a fusion with 32 Gig of RAM, but I really like the SSD.

If all your applications can fit in RAM and those applications actually load all their resources into RAM at startup then RAM would be the better investment. This also assumes that the OS and applications don’t rely on cache files. However OS X is heavily invest in both virtual memory and the use of temporary cache files. When my 2009 MacBook Pro began feeling slow I had the perfect opportunity to test whether more RAM, an SSD, or a combination of both led to better performance. (This was OS X 10.9) A couple years later the IT department dropped of a Mac mini to my office and I got to test it again with OS X 10.10. My results aren’t entirely scientific but there was no question that replacing the hard drive with an SSD resulted not just in speedier startups but also the complete disappearance of the beachball. Adding RAM alone - in both cases upgrading to the max RAM - led to fewer beach balling but didn’t totally eliminate them. Granted a beachball isn’t the only indication of performance but it is what we notice and it does cause us to pause in our work.

At home I have a 16GB iMac with a fusion drive - note it is an older model with a large SSD, not the smaller one Apple is using now. I can’t say with any confidence that Apple hasn’t hamstrung the fusion drive with that decision - can’t say it hasn’t either. I need to sit down and use one. What I can say is that even though my drive is 2/3 filled the fusion drive feels as fast today as it did when I first got it. Whatever magic Apple is performing in the background, it does its job well.

Thanks Boerne for your insight. Appreciated.

Ok, here are my questions:

1) Is an SSD only usable by purchasing from apple already pre-installed in an iMac or can I buy 3rd party SSD and install myself? I will obviously do the same with the ram as thats easy enough but i know i could potentially save a lot of money

2) Is it all still working fast? 🙂 My brother seems to think that the 1TB SSD ins't stable yet and I should wait?

I'm basically ready to pull the trigger, just wondering on that Fusion vs SSD thing. I want all the jazz...speed, performance..you name it. I run Premiere Pro all the time.

Thanks.