Filip Novotny If you watched Tuesday's unveiling of the new iMacs, your jaw probably dropped as well a request. The new all-in-one desktops from Apple are ultra-thin, powerful and have a better display. Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller also introduced with much fanfare the new Fusion Drive technology, which is supposed to combine the capacity of a hard drive with the speed of an SSD. Is this a regular hybrid drive, or perhaps some brand new technology?
If Apple really used a hybrid drive as we know it today, it wouldn't be anything groundbreaking. These devices work in such a way that, in addition to a classic hard disk with a large capacity, they also contain flash memory (known from SSD disks). This is usually several gigabytes in size and functions as an extended buffer. The hard drive is at rest most of the time and the platter is not spinning. Instead, all new data is written to flash memory, which is generally faster for such operations. It also usually shortens the boot process compared to standard disks. The problem is that the speed advantage disappears when reading larger files, plus there are a few other annoying issues. As already said, the hard disk in such devices does not run permanently, and the need to start it often means a noticeable increase in access time. When changing gear, the discs are also destroyed, much faster than when the plate is constantly rotating.
So hybrid drives don't seem like an entirely ideal candidate for use in the new iMac. Even the official page of the new desktops on Apple's website speaks against this technology:
Fusion Drive is a breakthrough concept that combines the large capacity of traditional hard drives with the high performance of flash memory. With Fusion Drive, your iMac is faster and more efficient at performing disk-intensive tasks—from booting to launching applications to importing photos. This is because the frequently used items are always ready in the fast flash memory, while the less frequently used ones remain on the hard disk. File transfers happen in the background, so you won't even notice them.
According to the information we learned at the conference itself, the Fusion Drive (for an additional fee) will contain a 1 TB or 3 TB hard drive and 128 GB of flash memory. In his presentation, Phil Schiller showed that the system, applications and frequently used files should be located on the first named, and the less used ones on the second. These two repositories will be automatically combined into a single volume by software, and such a "fusion" should result in faster reading and writing.
Therefore, based on these two sources, we can safely say that the flash in the new iMac does not appear as a mere extension of the buffer memory. According to the server article Ars Technica here we have something that IT specialists in the corporate sector have been using for some time, namely automatic tiering. Larger companies often have to deal with a problem with a huge amount of data, which without proper management can cause a big problem, in terms of speed, clarity and costs. These companies have to start building disk arrays and often use the concept of multi-layer storage: in order to keep costs as low as possible, these arrays not only use fast SSDs, but also slower hard disks. And automatic data layering is used to redistribute files between these two types of storage.
Let's imagine that one of the employees of an imaginary company creates a draft of a presentation and saves it to a shared repository so that he does not lose it. The file is initially placed on a slow hard drive where it sits idle for a few days waiting to be completed. When our Mr. X finishes the presentation, he sends it out to a few of his colleagues for review. They start opening it, the increase in demand for this file is noticed by special software, and thus moves it to a slightly faster hard drive. Let's say that when a big company boss mentions the presentation a week later at a regular meeting, everyone present starts downloading and forwarding it en masse. The system then intervenes again at this moment and moves the file to the fastest SSD disk. In this way, we can simply imagine the principle of automatic data layering, even though in reality we are not operating with entire files, but with data blocks at the sub-file level.
So this is what automatic data layering looks like in professional disk arrays, but how exactly does the Fusion Drive hidden in the depths of the new iMac work? According to the knowledge of the site Anandtech a 4 GB buffer memory is first created on the flash memory, which can be compared to the equivalent of hybrid drives. The computer writes all new data into this buffer until it is completely full. At that point, all other information is stored on the hard drive. The reason for this measure is that flash is much faster for smaller file operations. However, this is where the hybrid disc similarity ends.
Furthermore, Fusion Drive works as we showed in the example two paragraphs above. Special software hidden in the Mountain Lion system recognizes which files the user uses the most and moves them to the more powerful 128 GB flash memory. On the other hand, it saves the less necessary data to the hard disk. At the same time, Apple seems to have thought about the security of the files being moved in this way and leaves the original version on the source disk until the operation is completed. There should therefore be no unpleasant surprises, for example, after an unexpected power outage.
Based on this information, Fusion Drive looks like a very handy feature so far, especially for casual users who don't want to deal with managing files on multiple different storages. For more demanding customers, the provided 128 GB of flash memory may not be enough for all their data, but on the other hand, they can still use fast external drives connected, say, via Thunderbolt, for larger work files.
Probably the most important thing at this moment is to know how much this fun will actually cost us. As can be seen from the prices of the newly introduced products, Apple pays for progress. We will pay almost 35 crowns for the basic iMac model in Czech stores, and even the highest standard model does not include the Fusion Drive. This needs to be selected as a special configuration for an additional charge of CZK 6. Therefore, it is not excluded that for many users the advantages of Fusion Drive will not exceed its dizzying price. However, we will of course only be able to make an objective assessment when we try the new iMac for ourselves.
The new iMacs are slower in the basic menu than the previous series: they have disks with a speed of 5400 rpm. So I don't understand the price increase for basic models. Otherwise, the new "ultra-thin" iMac obviously only has edges, in the end it still goes to the appropriate depth. Apple could have spared this "innovation", it would have had more spaceq in the box and could have left the standard 3,5 disks with 7200 rpm there, and those who did not want FD would not have to suffer from the supposed laziness of the new iMacs. It seems to me that Apple is more "chasing water", i.e. certainly in desktops.
In most cases, you probably don't even know that, the system and your favorite programs will be loaded from the SSD and the fact that your files will be rolling on the remaining 5400rpm, I don't think that plays such a big role. The only time I think it could be a problem is when moving files from some external devices...
Well, this is the basic version. it only has a "5400rpm" drive and it won't even be possible to add a fusion drive to it. which I don't understand why. that configuration is enough for a lot of people and they just want a fast disk
You can't tell the difference between 5400 and 7200. Here, the quality of the disk is more important than the speed of its rotation. You can only recognize the raptor at 10 rpm, and even then it's about 20%. Anyway, everyone who works a little more with computers will eventually buy at least a 250GB SSD for the system. That costs a few bucks today.
Believe me, I don't even recognize it in practice, I have a MacBook Pro from which I removed the drive and replaced it with an SSD disk, speed? Incomparable, and the second drive is a WD 500GB and "only" 5400rpm, you can't tell. The system is fast, nimble, immediate. Personally, I think that everything will depend on the quality of the SSD disk rather than on the HDD, and the large amount of RAM memory has something to say about it.
But yes, of course it is recognizable, there is no dispute about that. But if you normally work with data of 200GB and more, you already know it. In that case, I think the "old" SSD + HD 7200rpm solution is better than the size- and speed-limited FD offered by Apple. Regardless of the fact that it is only for an additional fee and the base with a 5400rpm disc is really a weakness and it is even more expensive than the previous model.
Sorry, but I've never worked with a 200GB file…
samples, you know? you keep taking different ones and they won't fit on 128GB, where there are a lot of other things... So anyway, one would then be relegated to the cursed 5400 disk. And that's very slow loading. That's what you spend when opening a project in Logic of Youth.
May I know what samples you use in this size? I would really like to know. Thanks.
So can the FD be taken out and put into a steeper iMac?
No extra news for me.
It is best to have 2 disks in the computer - one SSD and one HDD (this concept also takes into account the team).
But I don't need the system to decide something for me. Leave the system, applications and data on the SSD and everything is then insanely fast.
Video playback does not need an SSD, so I have all the videos on the HDD. Also original photos, music, backups and installers.
Viewing photos is better on an SSD, so I have copies of them in reduced 2Mpix form on the SSD.
The SSD will also help a lot with video editing, so I temporarily move the videos I want to edit to the SSD.
128GB SSD + 2TB+ HDD (5400 rpm) is ideal for me
This is how you can make Macbook Pro, Mac Mini and PC.
Of course, it can be solved this way, but a lot of users have a mess in their data, just look at their iTunes library... That's why Fusion Drive seems to be beneficial for them. But we'll really leave the conclusions for later :)
Well, hats off, if my nitpicky brain imagines keeping such maglazju in partitioned partitions (or disks) it makes me want to vomit.. I'd probably sort through it for a year - assuming I could come up with an effective sorting and labeling system.. Fusion Drive would it probably helped me better :)