Apple's Fusion Drive now available on new entry-level 21.5" iMac orders - Page 3

Like with most things from Apple they invent a more elegant solution than other can conceive or wish to invest in. In this case Apple having control over their HW and OS does give them a distinct advantage.


Has anyone seen any performance reviews for the Fusion Drive compared to other drives?

Then why do they only offer the 1 TB solution and the price of 250.00 is a little high for 1 TB when compared to other Hybrids, 100 dollars less. I still think it's more cost effective to use two separate drives as well as a faster solution. A small 64GB SSD for the system and HDD for data. You can even get a Sandisk/Crucial/OCZ 256 GB now for 180.00, leave the base configuration of 1 TB and just buy a dual HD mounting kit for 50 and still be under the 250.00.

I installed a 256GB PCIe SSD card in my Mac, installed a clean 10.8 and restored from TM - including my home directory. That action occupied something like 100GB on the card, then I restored my Aperture library onto my home dir. All masters (100GB of original photo's) are now on the card, making Aperture incredibly fast. Still have 60+GB spare (I moved my iTunes media dir. to HDD as that was way too large for SSD, and wouldn't matter anyway).

Quite possibly a total non-informative post, but just goes to show that here on AI, there are weird people that do not follow a standard pattern, are non-conventional. Like me, lol.

They do use two drives. It is not a hybrid drive. I is an SSD card paired with a HDD for maximum performance and capacity per GB. It blows away any Hybrid HDD.


Have you thought about setting it up as a Fusion drive?

That is similar to what I ran for a couple of years on several machines and while that is a good solution, it did NOT improve the performance from the HDD one iota.  I moved iTunes music folder and iphoto library to the HDD, and movies to an external FW drive.  I also moved  mail, downloads, hibernation and swap over to the HDD (later two on dedicated partition for isolation and speed). That left the core OS and application on the SSD.  I symlinked most of the files so that the OS would find things where it expected.  I got great performance from the OS and app loading, but standard 7200rpm SATA II HDD performance whenever I had to hit the HDD.  

 

The beauty of Fusion via Core Storage is that I get virtually pure SSD performance regardless of what I am doing as I let Core Storage handle what goes where.  No more symlinked files except the hibernation file (my choice).  No more issues with ensuring both drives are properly backed up.  No more dealing with two drives, period.  Just Apple simplicity!  Those that don't want or get Core Storage Fusion, don't have to use it, but it really does work well and I don't see this a short term direction, but rather Apple's first real use of their Core Storage subsystem that will only grow over time.  I suspect that whenever Apple does finally replace HFS+, it will be build on top of Core Storage.  Remember that Apple came damned close to implementing ZFS only to pull back at the last minute over what appeared to be licensing issues.  They learned a lot from that experience and Core Storage is likely one of the lessons.  Core Storage is file system agnostic as proven by one individual that implemented ZFS on top of Core Storage (ok, no boot, but for all his data).  And as for being one of the weird people, those of us that have gone down the DIY Core Storage Fusion path certainly are not following a standard pattern.  If you already are in the dual drive, symlinked files mindset, you really owe it to yourself to at least spend the time to convert to Fusion and see that it gives you the best of the single drive world, the capacity of a massive HDD and the speed of SSD.

 

David

Only for a split second after Apple announced the darn thing. But now that **you** ask, maybe it IS something to think about. Even though everything is fast now because that is how I configured the location of files, it might indeed be better if I let the OS do that for me. Although I wouldn;t really need .mp3's on SSD because I play them a lot. Although with dtidmore's post I could put the swapfile on HDD and not worry about capacity.

Thanks sol, now you've just given me more food for thought!

Previous post should have read, "Thanks sol AND dtidmore, now you BOTH have given me..."

So yes, David, thanks for the comment. Currently I have a JBOD in my Mac, but was thinking about getting fast Raptors or something. Maybe it's better to try to get speed gains through Core Storage rather than spending money on new HDD's while I can get a similar speed increase through software. Choices choices

phil,

I have used Raptors in the past and they are the ONLY HDD that holds a candle to SSD speeds and are the only ones that can fully saturate a SATA II interface, but they fall way short of what a Fusion drive can offer.   My first cut with Fusion was with a SATA II OWC Mercury Extreme 120GB SSD and a WD 750GB Scorpio Black on a mid 2009 MBP and I was very satisfied (It booted and ran WAY faster than the factory stock 2012 ivy bridge MBP).  But given that the new 2012 ivy bridge MBP had a SATA III bus in the optical bay (the 2009 MBP was SATA II only optical bay), it was time to move upto a new SATA III SSD.  After looking at all the specs as well as which SSD controller each was using, I chose to stick with the Sandforce based designs and initially planned on getting another OWC SSD, but they were out of stock on the unit I wanted, so after reading anandtech's glowing reviews on the INTEL 520 series as well as every other review I could find, I warmed up to the INTEL 520 series.  The primary reason I chose to go with the 180GB was that it moved me into the highest performance envelope that INTEL offered in the 520 series.  The cost per GB was about the same, and it was not going to break the bank to move up to the 180GB. Whether or not the 180GB size offers any measurable Fusion improvement is unknown.  I can say that you will see a LOT bigger performance gain by going with Fusion vs Raptor drives and for less money to boot.  FYI, I got another 750GB Scorpio Black for the HDD in the new MB as I have had absolutely outstanding reliability and performance out of those drives for several years and I wanted to stay with a 7200rpm HDD, so 750GB is was. 

 

Good luck with Core Storage and don't be afraid to PM me if you have questions

 

David 

I dont see how having to manage the data would be a better solution.... The fusion remove all the hassel out of it, so imo its a better solution for most users.

That being said, a thunderbolt ssd could be usefull for people without the fusion drive indeed,but this means you will have to configure things then manage the data.

The hybrid drives are cache drives, so the fusion drive is not an hybrid because it manage whats on the ssd and the hd, it doesnt duplicate it to cache. The fusion drive works more like intel solution, but it has 128 ssd instead of 64g

1) Don't thank me, dtidmore is considerably more knowledgable than I am on CoreStorage.

2) If you do move to a single logical volume use Xbench to measure the drive(s) performance before and after the switch. I completely forgot to do so. I would love to see how it compares to what was stated during the event. Did they say 95% of the performance?

3) OT: Have you been to see Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures?



edit: Schiller didn't say 95%. He said, "nears the performance." The slide shows what I mentally rounded to 95% but that isn't very scientific and even if is accurate it's only for an Aperture import. I really would have thought we'd see extensive testing of Fusion Drive compared to other solutions.




Schiller also stated, "Of course, the operating system entirely fits on that flash so we keep it there for maximum system performance. [...] Automatically, as you're using your computer OS X is figuring out what you use the most and what will benefit from being on Flash."

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it but it sounds to me like CoreStorage isn't just moving/keeping the most frequently used files on the SSD card but has an understanding of what files will and will not benefit from being on flash.




edit 2: Whilst looking for Schiller's exact comments I found this article from October that I think explains Fusion well for the average techie.

• http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/10/23/apples-fusion-drive-hybrid-hdd-tiering-software/

Edited by SolipsismX - 1/6/13 at 12:56pm

That made me think of something... I haven't verified how effective this would be or if it will work at all but it looks like you can create a logical volume between pretty much any type of storage, internal or external. This makes me wonder if you could setup something tiny like a thumb drive (or some other drive) with a primary drive so that if the thumb drive was removed the system would be able to boot at all.

Thank you very much for the adds detailed information. Good post, good points. I am doing ok in the Terminal, but will take you up on your kind offer to get some 1on1 support if/when I hit an issue that I cannot fix myself.

Thanking you in advance,
Phil


2. Won't forget, but I might not do this immediately or the near future as I am about to get to work full time again. Might as well; After over 3 years of sabbatical I really should be getting my hands dirty again. And would love to do so, even though I just started training for the triathlon. The half one that is, 70.3 is enough for me.

3. Have seen his Strandbeest years ago. Even met him, fantastic guy! Did you just happen to bump into his name or work, or are you looking what us Dutch folks are actually up to?

LOL My comment reads like a command. It should be taken as a suggestion.

Half-Ironman. Wow! Is that in the Netherlands or are you traveling for it? I have a friend doing the Paris marathon in a few months.

I had first been introduced to it on QI and had meant to ask you but forgot. They did a Qi best of" this past Friday and showed that clip again. Stephen Fry had a replica of printed using a 3D printer which in itself was impressive because only the fan had to be assembled (I assume due to it's size) despite all its moving parts.

For those not familiar here is a Youtube video from the BBC. (Can't locate the QI clip)

Sure you could use a thumb drive as part of a Fusion configuration and if you removed it, you are correct that the OSX would NOT boot.  Fusion would not recognize it as a SSD since Fusion uses SMART reporting to determine drive type and SMART does not report over USB interfaces.  You would basically wind up with pretty much HDD performance levels as Fusion would just see the thumb drive as just another non-SSD drive.  Also, thumb drives have no form of write leveling technology, sparing  or trim functionality like a more sophisticated SSD controller provides, so the life for a thumb drive in a Fusion config would be a very IFFY proposition.  Remember that thumb drives are a write seldom, read often device and you have NO control over where Fusion put things so the poor thumb drive would likely suffer abuse.

 

david

SRT can apparently use larger SSDs but they put a 64GB limit on the cache size:

"Intel limited the maximum cache size to 64GB as it saw little benefit in internal tests to making the cache larger than that."
"Unlike Seagate's Momentus XT, both reads and writes are cached with SRT enabled."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/2

"Intel's smart response technology is a fully-fledged caching solution that involves larger amounts of NAND flash memory and therefore can cache not only frequently accessed LBAs, but current states of applications, enabling rapid standby, resume and other functions. For Seagate, this is a complete change of concept."

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20120911205703_Seagate_Optimizes_Next_Generation_Hybrid_Hard_Drive_for_Intel_s_Smart_Response_Technology.html

WD seems to be going a similar route but they are opting for 32GB:

http://wdc.com/en/company/pressroom/releases/?release=3fda5d16-3f23-430d-9479-5826842fb189

Seagate might go with 32GB to be competitive on price.

The OS won't be aware of two drives with the Seagate implementation so I'd say that's an abstraction from the OS. It's a different kind of abstraction but it should behave the same.

It seems they are more like two sports cars though. They should achieve very similar performance and overall functionality as far as the end user is concerned.

They are different in the way they are put together and Fusion is much better than manually setting up SRT but the Seagate method of having a single drive that you plug in with a large SSD cache with no setup required will behave just like Fusion. To the OS, it's a single drive.

I don't think the Seagate is out yet though so there won't be any tests of how they put it together. It'll certainly hit the limits sooner during large file transfers than Fusion:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2017365/lab-tests-pushing-a-fusion-drive-to-its-limits.html

Once the SSD is full of cached data with Fusion and you start a large sequential transfer, presumably it will go the speed of the HDD. There will still be the benefit from the cache for random writes though and they should always end up at least as fast as the sequential write speed of the HDD (or I guess the random write speed of the cache if it's lower).

That's a huge benefit over the separate SSD + HDD route because any random writes to the HDD will be insanely slow. With Fusion, they will always go into the cache.

It's very different. Just because OS X tells the user that it's one drive doesn't mean the OS doesn't understand the difference. This is a Mountain Lion implementation It's aware of the drives. We don't have al the details but we do know that the OS will determine which files will remain on which drive and it will do so more intelligently than simply looking at frequency of use. This is very different from anything else on the consumer market.


Here is a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620 in Disk Utility:



It sees it as one, simple rotational drive. It has no knowledge of the caching system. That is all done by the drive. On the flip side, the hybrid HDD has no knowledge of which files (sectors) are which, only which ones are more oft accessed. That is not what I call an ideal solution.


This is what my 13' MBP looks like. The OS sees two separate drives which it correctly labels which one is rotational and which one is solid state, and that's it's Core Storage.





In Disk Utility it's a little different. It only shows me the logical group. I named it Fusion. It didn't name itself that.






Check out those random reads and writes between SSDs, HDDs, and hybrid-HDD. As you note, since the hybrid-HDD is just cache it's going to act pretty much like an HDD.



The whole AnandTech write up is good. He concludes with, "While the Momentus XT isn't quite as fast as an SSD, it's a significant improvement over the mechanical drives found in notebooks today. [...] If you're not going to buy an SSD for your notebook, then definitely go for the Momentus XT. I'd almost go as far as to say it's a great option for desktop users but unless you're on a budget you're probably better served by a small SSD + 3.5" drive on the desktop." Which is exactly what Apple did but with some intelligence in the OS to make more seamless for the user. It's a good thing.

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd/8

Edited by SolipsismX - 1/6/13 at 3:08pm

 

 

Well, if you are happy with 256GB of storage then that mindset will work fine for you. For many of us pushing well beyond that need, a pure SSD solution just isn't feasible. Guess what! It doesn't need to be, because for those of us willing to setup our own Fusion Drives you get the best of both worlds  - super fast performance of an SSD and super cheap storage of a spinning disk.

Well, I put a Momentus XT in my MBP and wasn't impressed with the performance. It did probably feel a bit faster, but hardly anything to write home about. OTOH, when I switched from a platter drive to SSD, it was immediately noticeable and vastly superior. I haven't yet used a Fusion drive, so I can't comment on that, but I have to disagree with saying that the XT isn't QUITE as fast as an SSD (implying that it's comparable) and that it's a significant improvement over mechanical drives. In my experience, neither statement is true.

Maybe there's something about my configuration. Hybrid drives get a lot of rave reviews, but I just didn't see that much improvement.

Anand does show that subsequent boot and app loading times were lowered with repetition but it does seem like he was being kind to Seagate.

At some point I feel 1 GB will be standard though by then it will not be enough, 2 GB will be standard, and 4 GB will be available as the highest end option.

They are able to preload the OS and apps onto the SSD when you buy it, which other setups can't do but I doubt they'll have priorities for certain files over others such as always keeping the system folder on there. The benchmark test from before showed a large file transfer of over 128GB and it was SSD speed for most of the transfer and then dropped to the HDD speed so I'd have to assume they flushed the entire SSD first somehow. If the SSD gets filled up, as soon as you copy something else onto the Fusion drive, it will have to just send it to the HDD like other setups.

That's the current hybrid drive though. It doesn't use SRT, though it's supposed to store frequently used data, you just can't keep very much data in under 8GB. It's going to get confusing because the ones coming in next year will be called hybrid drives but use an entirely different setup.

2010 - hybrid drives launched, same as what we have now with just a 256MB-8GB cache and some adaptive memory to check frequent blocks - not enough flash, not fast, not like Fusion
2011 - Intel SRT, merges up to 64GB SSD cache with HDD but requires driver/BIOS-level management
2012 - Apple Fusion merges any SSD with HDD (4GB cache) - OS-level management
2013 - new hybrid drives with SRT (firmware-level), likely merge 32-64GB SSD with HDD, new internal management that can do better caching

Apple's advantage over an SRT setup will be the SSD size. If the cache is too small as tested here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/5

it can end up having no benefit at all. It's not clear if the caching management will differ significantly between them. I'd expect Fusion to put the most frequently accessed blocks on just like SRT. If future hybrid drives only come with 32GB though, Apple's 128GB will be a huge advantage.

They all seem to be working towards the same goal but Apple's setup will work best for the most part and they were first to use OS-level management and a large SSD. That's the benefit they get from selling both the software and hardware.

For end users, if the 2013 hybrid drives use a 64GB cache, I'd expect them to see mostly the same kind of results you get from Fusion and there are some benefits like it won't have any software incompatibilities like Fusion does and it will work on any OS. I'm not sure if you'll be able to boot Linux on a Fusion drive. You can also put multiple drives in together - for example the Mac Pro can have 4 SRT hybrid drives in RAID10.

As usual when Apple does something new, people are quick to point out it's not new at all but just like with the iPhone, while smartphones preceeded it, they weren't done properly. No implementation of a hybrid system prior to Fusion has really shown a significant benefit and if it has, has been difficult to setup. Apple has made it easy to configure and beneficial from the day you buy the machine and they've made the right choice with SSD size.

 

I think the problem with many suggestions suggestions like this is that they forget that the average Mac user is not a geek and spends zero time in forums such as this. Most people don't see the point or want the hassle of running two drives on the same machine. I'm not even sure that most people want the hassle of thinking about disk drives at all.

You are describing what Fusion Drive is: two separate drives.

 

I have a 300GB Raptor as my boot drive. There's only a small difference in performance compared to my other HDD's which are 7200rpm. The price you pay for the Raptor is not worth it for the small performance boost in my opinion, but I'm just a casual user. I'm so looking forward to getting my iMac with 3TB fusion drive. Based on what I've read, the fusion drive should smoke the Raptor but I won't be able to verify this until I receive my iMac.

 

I will be able to report how the computer performs after it is filled up well past the 64GB size of the SSD (I have a boatload of video files, movies, etc. haha). Nobody seems to have info on this and it's all I'm interested in. Of course, if your drive contents are less than 64GB, then it's safe to assume that the entirety of your drive contents are all on the flash drive for maximum performance.

 

The real question comes into play, when apps have to be stored on the HDD. What kind of performance hit will there be when that app, that you rarely use, has to be opened up? Nobody seems to have the answer to this question, but I'm not shy about answering it.

Edited by White Lotus - 1/7/13 at 5:33pm

That won't work:

AppleKB

Booting from HDD will 'always be slow' so your moving to SSD will be a pleasant experience. I already boot from (PCIe)SSD and was thinking about replacing my JBOD to 3x Rapture RAID0 (with a TM in the 4th bay and rotating external backup for off-site).

That is precisely what I want to know as well, before setting up a FD. My Aperture now is running from SSD, including all the Thumbs, Previews and Masters. And even though I might not look at all the thousands of Thumbs and Previews I do want them to be on the SSD permanently. I haven't found a way to tell CS to leave file / dir alone and keep it on the SSD. Goes the other way as well; no need for regular listened to .mp3's to move to SSD.

Hahaha!

Right now I'm just trying to get to this point of finishing 1.2, 56, 13.1 miles of swimming, cycling and running. If I succeed, I might want to do it officially. Berlin is closest, but I think I'll do it in Aix en Provence. That's only 130km from Mont Ventoux, so I can make it a workout holiday (< insert smiley here)

Best wished to your friend. I could *never* do a marathon! And thanks for the edit's in the previous FD post.

Phil,

I think the Sol was thinking that the thumb drive could act as a security key.  No thumb drive, no boot as the boot Fusion Drive would be incomplete.  You certainly can have a thumb drive as part of a Fusion Drive (could even be partitioned using Disk Utility so that only a tiny SLIVER of its space was added into the Fusion volume).  It could be the third disk added into a Fusion drive.  If even a kilobyte of space is allocated from the thumb drive to a Fusion drive and the thumb drive is removed, the Fusion drive will be incomplete and no longer bootable.  So in this way, you could actually use the thumb drive as a security key.

 

David T

Security key! I couldn't think of the proper term when trying to describe my scenario. Thank you. Sorry if I was unclear, Phil.

Phil, 

One way of forcing that the desired files remain on the SSD is to hard partition the SSD using disk utility before starting the FD setup and specifying ONLY the portion of the SSD that you want for FD to be included (ie exactly as I did to create an isolated swap/hibernation partition on the HDD).  This would leave whatever portion of the SSD you desire outside of FD.  Yes, you would have to either point Aperture to the SSD partition OR symlink it but this would accomplish your wishes to ensure that certain items are always on the SSD.  I would choose a SSD large enough to allow plenty of growth room for those files that you wish to remain SSD bound as well as at least another 128GB for FD.  There does NOT seem to be anything concrete about the necessity of 128GB SSD for FD, but as Apple has set that as the lower boundary, it is probably a good thing to stay at or above that number.

 

David T

That (!) is simplicity to the max that I just didn't see it; thanks much! The config of a FD setup is going to make it quite vulnerable with 1xSSD + 2xHDD. But if were to buy the 3 Raptors and create a RAID1 with my current separate SSD it would be just as vulnerable, if not more. On second thought I'm going to:

• keep 1 HDD dedicated to iTunes Media
• use 1 NAND stick on the PCIe SSD card for the FD
• use the other NAND stick on the PCIe SSD card for my Aperture Library
• create a FD from the other HDD and the (half)SSD

just maybe throw in the Security Key setup for kicks. Although it's a Mac Pro, not something you'd loose easily - lol

Here's the pic of the PCIe where you can see it has two sticks. It's the only bootable PCIe SSD available, and yes, you can create a RAID1, but I'm using it as a RAID0:



No no, it was clear to me what you wanted to accomplish. I just misunderstood the AppleKB article in this respect. Will you set it all up like this if/when you get the new iMac? I'd make certain you duplicate that thumb drive, nee, Security Key.
Edited by PhilBoogie - 1/21/13 at 11:39am

I know this is sort of late mentioning but I thought the original goal of the fusion drive was so that when loading a doucment(page document for say), was going to be the first page loaded in flash, yet the rest load on the hard drive while viewing it, So this would be best set up, you know what I mean. Still it is a improved setup instead the most viewed documents.

 

Well, the entire file is all going to be in one place within the drive, and that's on the SSD (if you use it frequently enough) or the HDD (if you don't).

You're thinking about the process of caching as applied to old hard drives, extended to "hybrid drives". For example, Seagate makes a "hybrid drive" that combines a regular spinning drive and a little NAND chip. This is all built into one piece, and the NAND is only used for temporarily caching files, like you've said. Fusion Drive is for the actual storage of files.

I believe FD to work at the block level, not file level. A bit like how iWork documents work with iCloud (≈ same difference)

I read a very good article over at AT and made the decision to not make use use of FD. It's really great tech, works like a charm and will be beneficial to many. Just not in my case: I have OSX + /Applications + my Home drive all on SSD except for my iTunes Media folder. That's not only way too large @ 500+GB but also useless to have on SSD. Sure, I could partition everything to keep specific stuff on HDD and other files specifically on SSD, but that's actually my current setup. And thanks to Solipsism I think I'm ready to move all my concert video's over to iTunes as well, another 400+GB so that Media folder will get >1TB

The tips in this thread (and other means) are really great and much appreciated!

Just to make sure the 'i's are dotted and the 't's are crossed (unless you're Danish or Norwegian then you want to make sure the 'o's are crossed and the 'a's are dotted) you know you can hold down the Option key when opening iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture to point to a new default library for those apps, right?

Indeed, I know this. Wasn't available till version, oh, can't remember, but I did buy the iTunes Library Manager software, back in the day.

Thanks for dotting and crossing.
Edited by PhilBoogie - 1/20/13 at 4:55am

Here's another tip. As I believe I mentioned previously iVI can do a lot to automate the entire process but it's also fairly stupid at times. For instance, it won't understand what is or isn't a TV show or movie when you think it should. One way around this is to do renaming of the files but you can also setup rules in iVI Settings that can not only alter the file name so that the metadata search will work better but also change whether it'll default to a Movie or TV Show.

I suggest building slowly until you get comfortable. If you do mess up with the metadata it's no big deal. You just delete from the iTunes Library but keep the file, then re-do in iVI from right where it is.

These Settings below took some trial and error to figure out that they were ideal for me.

I've used Handbrake for my conversion needs up to now an was just reading all there is about iVI and how people use it. I also read that sometimes iTunes is to blame for not truly knowing if a video should be in what folder and what tag to have.

So yes, taking it slowly is a good tip, thanks. Stupid thing is I used to have my video's in iTunes (2007 I believe) but I wasn't able to create iTunes capable versions of every video so I stopped and went back to manage them in the Finder. It's all properly named, but obviously limited in truly tagging, missing out on watch count and such.

edit: 2005: "The best digital jukebox and #1 music download store. Now with video." (2005) used to market iTunes 6. Sources from a good to read list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_Inc._slogans

So, for € 8.99 I'm getting to do some work, for which I have all the time in the world now that I broke my big toe yesterday. Kinda hurts, if only for not being able to run, cycle or swim.
Edited by PhilBoogie - 1/19/13 at 9:16pm