Q: is a fusion drive good for recording audio?

You will likely get different opinions but personally I would not use the fusion drive and would recommend an ssd drive.

Pretty significant speed difference.

Agreed.

A Fusion drive is a hybrid, where some stuff is stored on solid state components some on the moving components. The problem is that you don't have complete control over what is stored where. With audio recording you want to have complete control of what is stored where and when so you can optimize your situation depending on your current task.

Yes, you might get better performance with a Fusion Drive than with a plain HDD, but it might not be consistent depending on circumstance. That's why plain a HDD or SSD might be the better solution.

As Edgar mentioned, it's a smaller ssd and a larger standard hdd, the most damning reason I can think of for not using one as an audio drive is.....  it sticks an extra layer of software (drive management) between the audio being recorded and written to disk. Stay with the 7200rpm drive. 

While I am a fan of Fusion Drives having created on my Mac Pro. I think because of the large size of files that you would be working with using Logic Pro that would tend to overload the SSD. So in that case I would say a Fusion Drive would not be the ideal solution.

Hi alancanrs

I was in a similar position to you a few months back, I done a lot of research and asked IT experts and recording engineers, and I am pleased I did!

Fusion drive is not recommended for music production, and you could get pops and crackles,  Flash storage is the way to go.

You do need 7200rpm for sure also.

ideally you should use an external 7200rpm drive for all your files.

There are a couple of approaches. To take full advantage of your speedy SSD you can store projects you're working on on the SSD, and copy them to the external once they're finished, and delete the original from the SSD - to keep enough empty space for the OS to manoever in - preferrably a minimum of 50 GB should be kept free on the SSD.

However, as long as a project doesn't overload, you can also work on it directly from the external (just open the project), although USB will use some extra CPU.

Hi alanchanrs

I have a 'G technology Drive'  its just plug in and play, its already formatted for Mac, its 7200rpm.

Mine connects by USB, when you connect it a little icon comes on the screen to show you its connected.

Anyway, you don't need do anything, you open Logic and carry on as usual, then at the end of the session click FILE, at the top in Logic, SAVE, you will be given the option to save the project/session to the External drive, just click it, your session will be saved to the external drive.

Then, when you have finished working, you drag the External drive icon to the trash, (this is called dismounting) the icon will disappear, then you can turn the external drive off.

Next time you want to work on that particular session, just open it from the drive, and the same with all future Logic projects, you can save to the drive, all the files and stuff.

Your computer system drives just runs Logic for you, the files etc go the external drive.

Ideally you should have a further external drive to make back up copies of external drive number 1!

I have 1 external drive for all my Logic projects, then I make a back up to another identical external drive.

I also have yet another drive for Time Machine back up,  but don't worry about that now!

I or whoever can advise on here later if you wish to know.