Perhaps you created a Fusion Drive with a pair of external drives, or you have a Mac Pro, which has multiple drive bays, and you've paired a couple of drives in the bays as a Fusion Drive (but. Apple Mac mini, 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 Dual Core, 8GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive, Mac OS, Silver, MGEQ2LL/A (Newest Version) (Renewed) 3.9 out of 5 stars 18 $644.81 $ 644.
Fusion Drive Vs Ssd
Flash app for mac windows 10. There are two basic types of storage devices available today: hard disk drives and solid-state drives. For the lowest cost per gigabyte, you can't go wrong with a hard drive, and they come in truly massive sizes—up to a whopping 8 terabytes. However, they're relatively slow.
For speed, you want a solid-state drive, also known as an SSD. Because SSDs rely on flash storage, a type of non-volatile memory whose chips retain data without power, they're lightning fast. But chips are more expensive than hard disk platters and read/write heads, so the $250–$300 that will get you an 8 TB hard drive is enough for only a 1 TB SSD.
In 2012, Apple came up with a compromise: the Fusion Drive. As its name suggests, a Fusion Drive melds a hard disk drive with flash storage to provide the best of both worlds. The user sees just a single volume, but behind the scenes, macOS automatically and dynamically moves frequently used files—notably those used by the operating system—to the flash storage portion of the Fusion Drive for faster access while keeping infrequently used files on the hard drive.
In essence, the Fusion Drive provides much of the speed of an SSD along with the capacity of a hard drive. What's not to like?
There are some caveats. Good as a Fusion Drive is, it will never be as fast as a pure SSD, and you'll probably notice that most when working with older files. Try editing some photos from last year in Photos and you'll likely be working entirely on the slow hard drive.
Also, Apple provides the Fusion Drive as an option only for the iMac and Mac mini; there's no room it in a modern MacBook. But not all Fusion Drives are created equal. Icon for mac folders. They come in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 3 TB sizes, although not all iMac and Mac mini models can accept the larger Fusion Drives.
Originally, all Fusion Drives had 128 GB of speedy flash storage alongside the hard drive, but in 2015, Apple reduced the amount of flash storage in the iMac's 1 TB Fusion Drive to a paltry 24 GB (the Mac mini's 1 TB Fusion Drive still has 128 GB). The company subsequently increased it to 32 GB, but if you're buying a new iMac and want better performance from a Fusion Drive, go for either 2 TB or 3 TB, both of which have 128 GB of flash storage.
One final note. As of this writing, macOS 10.13 High Sierra will not convert a Fusion Drive to Apple's new APFS file system. We anticipate that will change at some point in the next year, and APFS might make Fusion Drives even a bit faster.
All that said, if you want the best performance and can afford the cost, get an SSD. If you need more space than an SSD can provide, consider using the SSD internally and adding an external hard drive connected via USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3. Barring that, a Fusion Drive—particularly one with 128 GB of flash storage—remains a good compromise. Honestly, we can't currently recommend a hard disk drive as the primary storage for a Mac unless low cost is paramount. Hard drive performance just isn't good enough.
Apple iMac 2019 SSD vs Fusion Drive for Video Editing
Apple Fusion Drive
The new Apple iMac 2019 computers are now available. If you use Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premier or Davinci Resolve you might be wondering which hard drive to purchase.
I am shocked that in 2019 apple are still producing Fusion Drives in their systems and not just going full solid state. The price of solid state drives are so cheap right now it might be time to retire the Fusion Drive.
I have been editing with Final Cut Pro X on a Late 2015 i5 iMac I purchased in 2016. This was my first apple computer and it's been great. My late 2015 iMac has a fusion drive and it has been an overall pretty decent experience. The main reason I opted for the off-the-shelf model was basically I was unable to wait a few days to receive a custom mode. Coming from PC video editing FCPX sped up my rendering times with 1080p footage like you wouldn't believe. Having the GPU handle a large of the rendering is amazing.
My Late 2015 iMac has done really well and I have edited and produced hundreds of videos with it. Since moving into the 4k realm it still does well but I believe it could be better. When I shoot in 10bit 4K or color grade Cine-D the system performance is starting to really struggle.
Go for Speed over Storage
Fusion Drive For Mac
If you are creating video content I really believe the best way to achieve the optimum results is to customize the latest iMac 2019 modes rather than buying an off the shelf one. Not only should you upgrade the video card, ram, and opt for the new core i9 CPU – you should definitely ditch the Fusion drive and opt for the 512-1TB SSD.
Now to be clear, the Fusion drive has a part of the storage that is a solid state but it's not the same sort of experience as an actual solid state drive. For this reason, I am choosing to go for the 512GB. The reason I am choosing the 512 over the larger SSD's is the price. I don't plan on actually storing anything locally on the computer.
If you're not into video editing or you use it occasionally for simple projects the Fusion drive will do the job but I feel like it's the bottleneck in my current iMac. My next iMac will 100% have the Solid State Drive (SSD) option.
The Best Editing Experience
One of the cool things about the recent iMac range is they all come with Thunderbolt 3 ports. This means you can connect external SSDs to the computer and get the same types of speeds you'd expect from the internal SSD. So what does this mean? It means you should purchase a Samsung SSD T5 drive and use it as a scrub drive. A scrub drive means you import and work from that external drive instead of the internal drive. This will ensure you don't have any storage issues on your system drive and will help Final Cut Pro X function better and faster.
Also, Apple provides the Fusion Drive as an option only for the iMac and Mac mini; there's no room it in a modern MacBook. But not all Fusion Drives are created equal. Icon for mac folders. They come in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 3 TB sizes, although not all iMac and Mac mini models can accept the larger Fusion Drives.
Originally, all Fusion Drives had 128 GB of speedy flash storage alongside the hard drive, but in 2015, Apple reduced the amount of flash storage in the iMac's 1 TB Fusion Drive to a paltry 24 GB (the Mac mini's 1 TB Fusion Drive still has 128 GB). The company subsequently increased it to 32 GB, but if you're buying a new iMac and want better performance from a Fusion Drive, go for either 2 TB or 3 TB, both of which have 128 GB of flash storage.
One final note. As of this writing, macOS 10.13 High Sierra will not convert a Fusion Drive to Apple's new APFS file system. We anticipate that will change at some point in the next year, and APFS might make Fusion Drives even a bit faster.
All that said, if you want the best performance and can afford the cost, get an SSD. If you need more space than an SSD can provide, consider using the SSD internally and adding an external hard drive connected via USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3. Barring that, a Fusion Drive—particularly one with 128 GB of flash storage—remains a good compromise. Honestly, we can't currently recommend a hard disk drive as the primary storage for a Mac unless low cost is paramount. Hard drive performance just isn't good enough.
Apple iMac 2019 SSD vs Fusion Drive for Video Editing
Apple Fusion Drive
The new Apple iMac 2019 computers are now available. If you use Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premier or Davinci Resolve you might be wondering which hard drive to purchase.
I am shocked that in 2019 apple are still producing Fusion Drives in their systems and not just going full solid state. The price of solid state drives are so cheap right now it might be time to retire the Fusion Drive.
I have been editing with Final Cut Pro X on a Late 2015 i5 iMac I purchased in 2016. This was my first apple computer and it's been great. My late 2015 iMac has a fusion drive and it has been an overall pretty decent experience. The main reason I opted for the off-the-shelf model was basically I was unable to wait a few days to receive a custom mode. Coming from PC video editing FCPX sped up my rendering times with 1080p footage like you wouldn't believe. Having the GPU handle a large of the rendering is amazing.
My Late 2015 iMac has done really well and I have edited and produced hundreds of videos with it. Since moving into the 4k realm it still does well but I believe it could be better. When I shoot in 10bit 4K or color grade Cine-D the system performance is starting to really struggle.
Go for Speed over Storage
Fusion Drive For Mac
If you are creating video content I really believe the best way to achieve the optimum results is to customize the latest iMac 2019 modes rather than buying an off the shelf one. Not only should you upgrade the video card, ram, and opt for the new core i9 CPU – you should definitely ditch the Fusion drive and opt for the 512-1TB SSD.
Now to be clear, the Fusion drive has a part of the storage that is a solid state but it's not the same sort of experience as an actual solid state drive. For this reason, I am choosing to go for the 512GB. The reason I am choosing the 512 over the larger SSD's is the price. I don't plan on actually storing anything locally on the computer.
If you're not into video editing or you use it occasionally for simple projects the Fusion drive will do the job but I feel like it's the bottleneck in my current iMac. My next iMac will 100% have the Solid State Drive (SSD) option.
The Best Editing Experience
One of the cool things about the recent iMac range is they all come with Thunderbolt 3 ports. This means you can connect external SSDs to the computer and get the same types of speeds you'd expect from the internal SSD. So what does this mean? It means you should purchase a Samsung SSD T5 drive and use it as a scrub drive. A scrub drive means you import and work from that external drive instead of the internal drive. This will ensure you don't have any storage issues on your system drive and will help Final Cut Pro X function better and faster.
My 2019 iMac Specs
I plan on upgrading this year with the following computer to make video editing a breeze!
- 27″ Retina 5k Display
- 3.6GHz 8-core ninth-generation Intel Core i9 processor with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
- 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 memory
- Radeon Pro Vega 48 with 8GB of HBM2 memory
- 512GB of SSD storage
I decided not to get a 2017 iMac or the 2018 iMac Pro. I was waiting for a regular iMac with a core i9 because the price to performance will be awesome. Just make sure you upgrade the hard drive to an SSD. If you're confused over which iMac 2019 graphics card to get I spent a day writing an article about that exact question.