Right, right. I imagine Apple decided not to go with Seagate drives for that very reason. They would have done testing on a host of combinations and configurations, finally settling on the one that gave a large enough SSD to be meaningfully usable while not being too large as to still be prohibitively expensive.
I bet there's a prototype iMac with a 1TB hard drive and a 32GB NAND chip sitting at Apple somewhere.
Seagate drives for the SSDs? I am under the impression they use the SSD cards in the iMacs which likely means they are Samsung or Toshiba.
As I've stated many times with my setup over the years I have an 80GB MLC Intel X25 G2 SSD but I have never used more than half of it for system and apps. If I were to do it all over again I would have gone with a 64GB SLC SSD which I think would likely be the bare minimum one would want to use but since my biggest app is Xcode and I don't have any of those large Adobe app suites installed it's more than sufficient for my needs. I have a hard time thinking of any usage type that would need the 256 or 512 GB that has been requested for Fusion Drive.
I mean they decided to go with (I'd say "come up with", but I'd be called a troll for thinking that Apple could ever create anything) Fusion Drive as it is because existing "hybrid drive" solutions (such as the one from Seagate that real trolls pretend is exactly like Fusion Drive) didn't do what they desired.
I mean they decided to go with (I'd say "come up with", but I'd be called a troll for thinking that Apple could ever create anything) Fusion Drive as it is because existing "hybrid drive" solutions (such as the one from Seagate that real trolls pretend is exactly like Fusion Drive) didn't do what they desired.
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?
I think a more reasonable explanation of the fusion drive is that 3TB SSDs don't exist. It's not about how cheap small SSDs are. It's more about capacity.
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 have a hard time thinking of any usage type that would need the 256 or 612 GB that has been requested for Fusion Drive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Have you thought about setting it up as a Fusion drive?
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.
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.
Have you thought about setting it up as a Fusion drive?
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'spost I could put the swapfile on HDD and not worry about capacity.
Thanks sol, now you've just given me more food for thought!
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
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
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
Fine, however it's still just another approach to the same goal. It's a gimmick, the price for SSD's have gone down significantly. Purchasing the iMac with it's original capacity and then purchasing an additional 64GB 550MB+ RW drive is not only cheaper but a much better solution.
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
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
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.
Fusion Drive is typical Apple: The introduction focused on user benefit but cut the details short. Even so, it seems likely it is a software feature of Mac OS X rather than third-party hardware transplanted to the platform. It really is innovative for a desktop operating system to implement automated tiered storage, since most previous (failed) attempts have been limited to small caches of data.
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.
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.
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.
Good luck with Core Storage and don't be afraid to PM me if you have questions
David
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
SRT is limited to 64GB, while Fusion has NO limitations on the size of the SSD.
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."
"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."
it provides NO ability to pool physical drives into a logical pool, nor does it abstract the physical hardware from the OS. Core Storage is enterprise class storage technology that is far more forward looking than SRT.
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.
Could we PLEASE STOP saying that Fusion is the same as SRT. They are only as similar as a sports car is to SUV.
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:
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.
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.
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.
BTW - Originally I didn't think you could get the fusion drive on the base model 27 inch iMac. It looks like you can order the fusion drive on the base model 27 inch now too. My question is, when will they offer a 3 TB fusion drive on the 21 inch? It seems I should be able to get a drive of that size on a 21 inch model. I understand there's less space on the back of a 21 inch iMac, but I think you should be able to find a drive like that without too much trouble.
Welcome to the Apple upsell model.
Also: Good luck on configuring a 2GB or even 1GB graphics card to anything other than the most expensive iMac model.
Given how cheap 256GB SSDs are nowadays, the only reasonable explanation I can imagine to this strong promotion of "Fusion drives" is that somebody (either Apple or a partner) has a worrying stock of 128GB SSDs and they don't know how to get rid of the stock. Other than that, I cannot find an explanation for pushing the Fusion drive this hard, considering how cheap 256GB SSDs are now, and even 512GB SSDs start to be quite affordable for low-end machines...
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.
Comments
Seagate drives for the SSDs? I am under the impression they use the SSD cards in the iMacs which likely means they are Samsung or Toshiba.
As I've stated many times with my setup over the years I have an 80GB MLC Intel X25 G2 SSD but I have never used more than half of it for system and apps. If I were to do it all over again I would have gone with a 64GB SLC SSD which I think would likely be the bare minimum one would want to use but since my biggest app is Xcode and I don't have any of those large Adobe app suites installed it's more than sufficient for my needs. I have a hard time thinking of any usage type that would need the 256 or 512 GB that has been requested for Fusion Drive.
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Seagate drives for the SSDs?
I mean they decided to go with (I'd say "come up with", but I'd be called a troll for thinking that Apple could ever create anything) Fusion Drive as it is because existing "hybrid drive" solutions (such as the one from Seagate that real trolls pretend is exactly like Fusion Drive) didn't do what they desired.
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?
Quote:
Originally Posted by chabig
I think a more reasonable explanation of the fusion drive is that 3TB SSDs don't exist. It's not about how cheap small SSDs are. It's more about capacity.
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?
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
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.
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
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
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.
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)
[VIDEO]
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gtj333
BTW - Originally I didn't think you could get the fusion drive on the base model 27 inch iMac. It looks like you can order the fusion drive on the base model 27 inch now too. My question is, when will they offer a 3 TB fusion drive on the 21 inch? It seems I should be able to get a drive of that size on a 21 inch model. I understand there's less space on the back of a 21 inch iMac, but I think you should be able to find a drive like that without too much trouble.
Welcome to the Apple upsell model.
Also: Good luck on configuring a 2GB or even 1GB graphics card to anything other than the most expensive iMac model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ecs
Given how cheap 256GB SSDs are nowadays, the only reasonable explanation I can imagine to this strong promotion of "Fusion drives" is that somebody (either Apple or a partner) has a worrying stock of 128GB SSDs and they don't know how to get rid of the stock. Other than that, I cannot find an explanation for pushing the Fusion drive this hard, considering how cheap 256GB SSDs are now, and even 512GB SSDs start to be quite affordable for low-end machines...
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.