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Drive size and type

Ready to purchase a 27" iMac retina and sizing up all the options.....


I'm torn on what type and size of hard drive to get.......

Flash or fusion?


I'd like to get a 3TB but like the idea of an all flash hard drive for speed.

How much of a 3TB is flash with the fusion drive?


Thanks for any help for an iMac newbie.

Posted on Sep 3, 2015 10:56 AM

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Posted on Sep 3, 2015 2:59 PM

128GB

13 replies

Sep 3, 2015 2:59 PM in response to buerkletucson

Do NOT take the Fusion Drive. Old Hat. It makes much more disk reads and writes than necessary to keep the speed up.

The price difference is not worth the impossibilities.

Just an SSD, say 256GB.

Edit: I would like to rephrase "The price difference is not worth the impossibilities." with an addition: "this iMac is worth the best solution"

Lex

Sep 3, 2015 2:50 PM in response to Lexiepex

Thanks for the replies.....


Sort of surprised not recommending the Fusion drive......Apple makes it sound like the perfect solution.

So, you guys recommend a SS flash drive..........1GB?


I need the largest size I can get, 1TB these days is not real huge that's why I was considering the 3TB Fusion.

But, if that's not a good choice, I'd spend the bucks on the 1TB SS.


What do you guys use if you run out of space with such a drive......just hook up an external USB HD for files, music, videos and such?


Thanks for your help.....I want to get this right since this will be the most I've ever spent on a computer.

Sep 3, 2015 3:07 PM in response to buerkletucson

I'm the wrong one to ask -- my main computer is a 128GB MacBook Air and it has 70GB free. I do absolutely love the SSD on it.


I suspect Lex is going to answer that you should get the 256GB SSD and an external drive -- that is what I would think would make sense for a desktop but it isn't something I've had to deal with so there may be other solutions.

Sep 3, 2015 3:39 PM in response to buerkletucson

I had a Fusion Drive for 3 days on a new Mac and - fortunately - there were other problems with it, so it was declared DOA and returned to the store. I made sure to get a regular drive in the replacement. My main problem with the Fusion drive is that you do not have control over it and I don't care for that at all. It was more than a pain trying to partition it and when I had to erase it all because it was being returned, it was even more of a pain. The only things that saved the day was the fact that I had made a bootable clone immediately (before doing anything else), so i was finally able to wipe it and just clone the factory fresh system back. I am ok with the regular 7200 rpm drive (1 TB); however, if I could afford it, I would go for at least a 512 GB SSD. I need lots of hard drive space because I do a fair share of movie/video editing/rendering which requires a lot of empty space. Thinking about that, it is probably better to have the regular drive for those tasks as the writes on an SSD are numbered.


And yes, park videos/music/space hogging files on externals.

Sep 3, 2015 11:41 PM in response to babowa

Hi Babowa, indeed the "overhead" in a Fusion drive is killing, and indeed you have no control over it. The idea is not bad at first sight but if you think about it a bit more, it is a bad idea. And partitioning it makes it even worse. It made it to the market in Apple in a time that a SSD was much more expensive.

Nowadays the SSD has a much longer lifetime generally than a HDD, the main "weak" point being the writing speed. With the modern GC on modern SSD this however will remain as new when enough GC free space.

have a good day,

Lex

Sep 4, 2015 4:33 AM in response to Lexiepex

Again, thank to all that responded, very helpful.


I was leaning towards the Fusion but glad I asked as that doesn't sound like a good option.

I will go with the 1TB SS flash drive on my new iMAC 27" Retina.


I've seen the rumors on a refresh for the iMac 27" retina......sounds like the smaller iMACs will have the most changes and may get retina displays. Also something about a 21" iMAC.


I'm waiting until after next Tuesdays announcements before pulling the plug.......but I need to get something soon.

Thanks...

Drive size and type

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