"Fusion" drive for main storage.

dougoftheabaci said:

Short answer: Not really.

Longer answer: A fusion drive is going to be slower than having separate SSD and HDD volumes, it's also a bit more complicated to set this sort of thing up (though Ars Technica has a guide).

Besides, hybrid drives and fusion drives aren't so much about performance as they are about simplicity. For most users it's easier to understand how to use a single volume rather than multiple volumes. Though it's worth noting one of the benefits of a hybrid drive is that you can get a noticeable speed boost over a traditional mechanical drive without giving up an extra bay in your case. However, since most cases have at least two bays that's not really an issue.

On a completely unrelated note, go with the 770. Aside from the fact that it'll run great in OS X by default, many pro-level video editing apps specifically benefit from the Cuda cores found in Nvidia GPUs. When it comes to gaming and that sort of stuff AMD vs. Nvidia is kind of a tossup but when it's down to performance in professional-grade software Nvidia wins hands down.

Click to expand...

spitfirefd said:

One other question would be, would a 240gig ssd be large enough for OSX or would a 500 be better? I know both are large enough for the basic OS but, are there other applications that would benefit from its speed?

Click to expand...

dougoftheabaci said:

Most programs will benefit on some level from an SSD, to what degree kind of depends on the app. I have a 250 GB Samsung EVO as my main drive and it's more than enough for software and most other things. Until recently I had a 2 TB HDD in my case as well for storage, but I was able to move that all off onto a NAS.

FWIW, depending on how much storage you actually need, a 500 GB or even a 1 TB SSD isn't that expensive. The former you can get for around $200 and the latter for around $380. Given the simplicity vs. setting up a fusion drive plus the speed of going full SSD, it might be worth your time to consider.

Click to expand...

spitfirefd said:

Thanks, interesting, how fast is the data transfer from a NAS drive? Probably depends on the connection type I would assume.

Click to expand...

dougoftheabaci said:

Connection type, NAS hardware and drive RAID setup, yeah. If you can set up a wireless-AC network or just run ethernet cables then it's not really too bad. The question is more if you're just keeping a large media library on the device or if you're using that storage for 4K video editing...

If you're like me and you're looking to use it to store an iTunes library, do Time Machine backups and as a place to store 1080p movies then a NAS will work just fine as long as it's not hamstrung by a slow network.

If you're doing heavy-duty content creation... You either need to invest in a crazy 10 Gbit NAS and network or just go with internal storage.

As a FWIW note, if your wife can figure out a thumb drive she can figure out a secondary drive or NAS. I love my mother but I wouldn't call her a technologically advanced individual and she's got external hard drives and the like easily figured out with little fuss. Given the fact that a fusion setup adds a lot of complexity to the actual setup of the machine and the fact that you now have two points of failure for all of your data... Seems like a lot of risk for little gain.

Click to expand...