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When Apple announced Fusion Drive, we expected it to be quick. But TLDToday has performed some speed tests, comparing a new Mac mini to its predecessor, and the results are pretty amazing.
Despite the fact that the new Fusion Drive uses a 5,400rpm hard disk as its bulk storage, it doesn’t seem to hold things back. Boot times are half what they used to be—perhaps not too surprising as the OS is almost certainly installed on the SSD—but copying files is just so. Much. Quicker.
If you’re an impatient kind of person, Fusion Drive looks like something you want in your life. [TLDToday via 9to5mac]
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My Sh*T Got Stolen. Or Why You Need Contents Insurance
Isn’t that the point of it?
Haha!
What a silly article
Shh, Apple is casting a spell!
SURELY FLASH DRIVES AREN’T FASTER THAN HARD DRIVES?!??!?!!
Mate its juts a hybrid drive…. calm down! They been out for 3 years…
Not like Apple to take existing technology give it a funky name and claim it as their own is it!
“but it’s not a hybrid drive, it works using software!”
translation:
“blah blah blah blah blah blah”
you mean this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost
I can already see them trying to sue Seagate seeing as they’ve just paired up with Samsung.
Not too sure about that.
The “Fusion Drive” brand refers to the technology, for want of a better word, Apple has put to MacOS to mount a solid state disk and a mechanical disk as one logical volume. What makes it different to other operating systems is that OSX knows which one of the underlying hardware is the SDD and that it needs to install operating system files there. And if I understood the techie bits behind the marketing bollocks correctly, there’s also some algorithm that decides which applications and files the user is mostly using and the OS moves them to the SSD and vice versa.
You did understand the techie bits. But it still not new.
The Seagate Momentus XT has been around for a while now.
“Seagate Adaptive Memory™ technology uses algorithms to monitor data usage in real time, ensuring that frequently used data is stored in the NAND flash memory and improving system-level performance dramatically.”
Yeah except the hybrid drives like the Momentus XT have always had puny SSD bits of around 4GB whilst the fusion drive looks as if it has a decent 120GB judging by the vid – although I may be wrong
How does this compare to those hybrid drives, I’ve been thinking of adding an SSD to my Macbook pro and putting the standard 500GB where the DVD drive currently is, but I’m not sure how this affects dual booting. Using a hybrid drive would be so much quicker, are they any good?
The one I’ve been looking at is this one:
http://www.ebuyer.com/321969-seagate-750gb-momentus-xt-ssd-st750lx003
I’ve had a Momentus 750 in my Windows laptop for about 6 months & have been very happy with it.
Boot times are quick and there have been no reliability probems.
I would say stick with your original plan and get an SSD for your OS and important programs. SSDs are getting a lot cheaper so you can easily get 128-256gb one fairly cheaply.
Hybrids are decent if you only have space for one but in your situation go for the SSD.
I have had a ssd in my macbook for a few months now. its amazing.
If you are not fussed for lots of space (e.gh over 256 gb) buy an ssd. The 256GB ssd’s are not sub £140.
I only say this as all my stuff is on my Nas
+1 because you use a NAS.
I’m about to jump into the world of network storage.
Is this any good? (as a starter bit of kit)
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=280
(I can’t afford anything expensive, but want to get involved.)
Yeah would be a great place to start… I have been using the old WD Live book for a few years now and have had no issues. The only down side is its only got one drive so no option to raid to a second drive incase the first one fails for any reason. But that said its great for the price… I want one of these next http://www.qnapstore.com/?dt_catalog=qnap-ts-412
Funny enough that’s been on my wishlist for when I next upgrade my gear.
Yeah the Qnap is a great bit of kit, we use the ts219p at work and for our customers, cant fault them.
That netgear looks good for the price, is it one you have used yourself?
Yup I got it as it is a cheap 2 bay with nice features but mainly for the raid setup. It’s been solid in performance for me hence why I recommend it to people who want a bit more from a 1 disk nas but don’t want to go all out on a 4 bay.
I just tell people that if they have fibre-optic broadband having that has decent download/upload ratio having their own private cloud storage is a nice complement to their home setup.
+1 for QNAPs. I have the 419pII at home. Its really easy to set up and there are lots of features to play with.
Think carefully about what RAID level you want to operate at though. I use mine almost exclusively for storing and streaming video. When I had 2 drives in there at RAID 1, I played 4 x 8-10gb blu-ray movies in VLC at the same time directly from a mapped network drive before it got choppy.
Put another drive in and went to RAID 5 and playing two means it needs to buffer a fair bit and sometimes just one depending on what else is going on. So I have to stream movies to XBMC or similar instead of playing directly from a mapped drive.
That what i use my WD for at the moment, just want to be a bit more secure in the knowledge that i have a back up, would hate to lose all my films, so QNAPS the way to go for me, just need to get christmas out of the way first
Also using XBMC (Raspbmc) on my Raspberry Pi.
As Zack said, it’s a good place to start.
The one I would recommend would be:
http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/storage/prosumer/RND2210.aspx
It is a little more than the WD but it’s is a two bay drive up to 6TB which you can RAID if you want. Another feature I like with these is you can swap out hds easily.
Look out for sales or deals.
Just make sure you look for the RND2210 and not the RND2000 as physically they look almost identical.
I went with a SSD in my iMac (only 250GB). I use a FireWire 800 external HDD for media storage.
The OS and Applications are awesomely fast and I don’t notice any issue with retrieving the media. It also makes it easier (for me anyway) to clone your media disk.
Get an SSD AND an HDD and just use Core Storage to magically turn it into a Fusion Drive. It’s already been covered in Gizmodo but I can provide the article.
My 2011 MBP is running this and it’s amazing. Boot time is about 9 seconds.
Do they both have to sit internally (and use the SATA II)?
Also, it’s a late 2009 model, dunno if that matters.
Not internally as the guy who found it originally was using an internal SSD and a USB HDD but you wouldn’t want to set it up with an external drive unless it’s permanently connected.
I’ve replaced my optical drive with a second hard drive and that works well in MBPs
Cool. I’ll start digging. I just didn’t want to open up the iMac again because that shit is straight up like 7 different levels of scary.
Worth listening to this week’s Hypercritical podcast. They talk about how the system works, and it turns out that it’s more software than hardware. The MacOS disk handling can use two physical volumes as one logical HDD.
Upshot appears to be, if you set it up that way with *any* SSD and HDD, then it will do the same as the fusion drive. It will actually move files at the block level so that frequently accessed blocks are on the faster drive. So it will work on any Mac with up to date OS, and with any combination of drives. Which sounds like a win to me.
By the way, I use a hybrid drive in my Macbook. No idea if the above affects me as I am not sure how the SSD section is addressed, but it’s mighty fast compared to the previous caviar blue drive. Like having a new computer!
If you are feeling exceedingly geeky, the hypercritical episode (http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/92) discussed this blog (http://jollyjinx.tumblr.com/post/34638496292/fusion-drive-on-older-macs-yes-since-apple-has) demonstrating that it can work on older Macs
Do I get a star yet, or still need to work on wittier?
Don’t ask, it makes you look needy a star will come in time
:0)
You guys do realise that this is just a standard 1TB hard drive, and an 128GB SSD with a fancy software routine right?
There is NOTHING special about Fusion Drive. It’s even been proven that you can make your own with a few terminal command lines.
The Mac Mini fortunately has space for 2 laptop sized hard drives, which are both taken up with the so called “Fusion Drive”.
You don’t “make your own”, what you make is indeed “Fusion Drive”. It was introduced in MacOSX 10.7 and the diskutil command is what you need to set it up on older computers that run Lion or newer. This is what Apple does if you ticked the “Fusion Drive” box when buying a new computer.
BTW, read up on what it does with the underlying hardware before you surmise that “there is NOTHING special” about it.
Yeah, you make ur own. It’s called installing OS and apps on a SSD, and files on a regular HD.
The difference is, it doesn’t cost 5-10 times of it’s actuall value.
But I understand you though, social value that comes with Apple is priceless. It attracts the right kind of people too.
A lot of words to just say nothing.
+1
Fusion Drive is an extension of Core Storage. CS was introduced in Lion and FUD is introduced in Mountain Lion.
The suggestion that you’re ‘making your own’ with a few commands is stupid. You’re ‘enabling’ it with a few commands because Apple’s provided it to you in their operating system.
The point is, it is all in software, that’s what I was trying to get across.
I can put a 1TB 5400RPM HD, and a 512GB SSD, and have a better Fusion Drive than what Apple provide hardware-wise.
In essence I would be “making my own”, since there is no such option as a 1.5TB Fusion Drive that you can buy, that works EXACTLY THE SAME.
It’s just a couple of commands and here’s a good enough blog on how to do it: http://jollyjinx.tumblr.com/post/34638496292/fusion-drive-on-older-macs-yes-since-apple-has
I just wish Apple did something about the ageing HFS.
I mean’t that there is nothing special about the hardware. As H00pyFr00d, the magic is in Core Storage. The hardware is literally a 1TB and 128GB SSD with software extensions enabled.
If I put a 1TB and 512GB SSD and enabled the extensions myself, I could “make a better” Fusion Drive with more capacity that costs a lot less.
I don’t think anyone, including Apple, said Fusion Drive is some bespoke hardware. In fact, everyone claims the opposite, that it is a feature of MacOS X.
Nobody I know buys memory or disks from Apple due to the markup – nothing new there. Although, with the SSDs and RAM soldered to the motherboard on a lot of their products not buying from Apple is becoming less of an option.
They never claimed it was hardware, but their clever marketing lead people to believe it was some take on hybrid drive technology, which it isn’t. It’s 2 bog standard drives with a big mark-up.
Until most people received their machines with their hardware, most people didn’t know this fact, trust me its all over the Apple and Mac Rumors forums. With this knowledge its nice to know I can have the exact same configuration in my future Mac without having to fork out approximately £150 more than I have to.
Holy Sh*t, yet anoter Apple advert.
I stuck a £50 128 GB into a 5 year old laptop. Guess what, it was flying afterwards.
Coz that’s what SSDs are meant to do.
How much is this Apple thing? Let me guess, it’s about 5-10 times more, but money looses all value when it comes to Apple. It’s stuff is worth it’s weight in gold. And the quality, OMG the quality of products. Yah, if Apple gave it 5yrs, but it doesn’t, coz it’s not quality, it’s makeup.
Totes. There are 4 Apple articles on the front page alone, it’s complete favouritism since there’s only three google articles, two Microsoft articles and one John Lewis article. Journalistic integrity is dead.
no, you’re thinking of MAC.