Barring that, a Fusion Drive-particularly one with 128 GB of flash storage-remains a good compromise. If you need more space than an SSD can provide, consider using the SSD internally and adding an external hard drive connected via USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3. We anticipate that will change at some point in the next year, and APFS might make Fusion Drives even a bit faster.Īll that said, if you want the best performance and can afford the cost, get an SSD. As of this writing, macOS 10.13 High Sierra will not convert a Fusion Drive to Apple’s new APFS file system. The company subsequently increased it to 32 GB, but if you’re buying a new iMac and want better performance from a Fusion Drive, go for either 2 TB or 3 TB, both of which have 128 GB of flash storage.
Originally, all Fusion Drives had 128 GB of speedy flash storage alongside the hard drive, but in 2015, Apple reduced the amount of flash storage in the iMac’s 1 TB Fusion Drive to a paltry 24 GB (the Mac mini’s 1 TB Fusion Drive still has 128 GB). They come in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 3 TB sizes, although not all iMac and Mac mini models can accept the larger Fusion Drives. But not all Fusion Drives are created equal. Try editing some photos from last year in Photos and you’ll likely be working entirely on the slow hard drive.Īlso, Apple provides the Fusion Drive as an option only for the iMac and Mac mini there’s no room it in a modern MacBook.
Good as a Fusion Drive is, it will never be as fast as a pure SSD, and you’ll probably notice that most when working with older files. In essence, the Fusion Drive provides much of the speed of an SSD along with the capacity of a hard drive. The user sees just a single volume, but behind the scenes, macOS automatically and dynamically moves frequently used files-notably those used by the operating system-to the flash storage portion of the Fusion Drive for faster access while keeping infrequently used files on the hard drive. As its name suggests, a Fusion Drive melds a hard disk drive with flash storage to provide the best of both worlds.
In 2012, Apple came up with a compromise: the Fusion Drive. But chips are more expensive than hard disk platters and read/write heads, so the $250–$300 that will get you an 8 TB hard drive is enough for only a 1 TB SSD. Because SSDs rely on flash storage, a type of non-volatile memory whose chips retain data without power, they’re lightning fast. However, they’re relatively slow.įor speed, you want a solid-state drive, also known as an SSD. For the lowest cost per gigabyte, you can’t go wrong with a hard drive, and they come in truly massive sizes-up to a whopping 8 terabytes. There are two basic types of storage devices available today: hard disk drives and solid-state drives.
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