When it comes to speed there is no beating an SSD, however, when the fusion drive was first introduced SSDs were far more expensive than traditional hard drives. In this blog, we will take a closer look at the fusion drive and explain just why it is one to avoid. However, the hybrid drive is far from perfect and just like most products, has its drawbacks.
When the fusion drive was first announced they were significantly cheaper than a full SSD device and gave you faster boot time and plenty of storage space.
First announced in 2012, fusion drives are available in select Mac and iMac models. If you are in the market for a Retina 5K display iMac, these Fusion Drives now come standard and you can pick one up today at your local CityMac store.Apple’s fusion drive is a hybrid drive that offers the best of both worlds, combining flash storage and hard drive storage in one.
This will speed up everything that the computer does, making your computer as fast as possible.Īpple first announced their Fusion Drives in October 2012 as an upgrade option in their iMacs and Mac Minis. The main function of the Fusion Drive is the ability to automatically store the most frequently used files, applications, documents or photos on the faster SSD part and the infrequently used items stay on the larger standard hard drive. A 1TB Fusion Drive comes with 128GB’s of SSD storage merged with a traditional hard drive to be able to store more. What makes the Apple Fusion Drive so great is that it combines the best part of both hard drives into one drive. The only downside to SSD’s is their cost versus storage capacity - as right now, a 1TB SSD drive will cost you in the range of $350-$500 on Amazon versus a traditional hard drive that would cost you under $100. These SSD’s have flash memory that makes your data easily retrievable, makes your computer faster and less prone to failure. That means no moving spindle, no moving arm and no data platters to scratch that could leave you with unreadable data. The main benefit to a solid-state drive (SSD) is their speed and reliability, as they have no moving parts. Because of the moving parts in these hard drives, they are less-reliable and they access data in a slower manner than a solid-state drive. Whenever the hard drive is active and data is being accessed, it is best to not move the computer - otherwise these platters can get damaged, just like CD’s can get scratched. If your hard drive is full, reading the information off of the platters can take awhile and this will cause a computer’s overall speed to decrease or even become unresponsive.
This arm moves back and forth millions of times in order to meet the demands of a working hard drive. Think of these platters as little CD’s that are read and written to by a little arm that moves back and forth, reading the information that is on the platters. These hard drives consist of data platters, which is where the data is stored. The downside of traditional hard drives is that they tend to not be as reliable as solid-state drives because of their moving parts. Traditional hard drives come with either 500GB or 1TB of storage space and has become the standard storage options in computers today. The basic advantage of having a traditional hard drive is the storage capacity. Apple's storage upgrade options for the new Retina 5K iMac
Apple has moved away from installing the traditional hard drives in their laptops as only the Macbook Pro (non-retina) offers a traditional hard drive. Today, we are going to look at the differences between a Fusion Drive and a traditional hard drive as well as explain the benefits of each.īuy iMac with Retina 5K Display from CityMac Online! Apple's Historical Hard Drive Optionsīefore the release of the Retina 5K iMac, Apple has only offered two different types of hard drives to be installed in their baseline iMac models - the standard high capacity hard drives and SSD (solid-state) hard drives. These new iMac's will come standard with a Fusion Drive installed. Apple recently announced their new iMac’s with Retina 5K Display.