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Please stop the madness: Apple Mac’s Fusion Drive is not about caching

Thursday, November 29, 2012 · 4:01 pm · 24 Comments

“There was some hubbub surrounding the release of machines with Apple’s Fusion Drive Core Storage-based management software,” David Morgenstern reports for ZDNet. “And much confusion. The word ‘caching’ crept into the stories and posts. The caching label appears to be sticking and that is incorrect.”

Morgenstern reports, “I ran a search for ‘Fusion Drive’ and ‘caching’ and found plenty of recent stories that describe the Fusion Drive as managing caching for a performance boost… Not caching. Tiering.”

Read more in the full article here.

Related articles:
Apple’s new Fusion Drive technology also works on older Macs – October 31, 2012
Apple’s new patented Fusion Drive is more advanced than you might think – October 24, 2012

Categories: News

Tags: Apple Inc., Fusion Drive, storage

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24 Comments

trondude

Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:05 pm · Reply

Tidbit:
If you can afford Apple, you can afford SSD, no fusion required.
- 3monkies
  
  Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:08 pm · Reply
  
  idiot…
  - trondude
    
    Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:11 pm · Reply
    
    Monkey….
    - Derek Currie
      
      Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 5:00 pm · Reply
      
      I’m glad to see you trolling as a real, logged in human being, trondude. But it’s still trolling.
      
      AND you obviously haven’t bothered to do your homework regarding the point of having BOTH an HD and an SSD. Please toddle along and look it up.
      - Derek Currie
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 5:05 pm · Reply
        
        Oh and, while you’re studying Apple’s fusion drive systems, be sure to look up the following two terms, both of which help explain why Apple Mac computers continue to be the CHEAPEST PCs on the market. You get what you pay for:
        
        1) ROI: Return on Investment. Macs beat PCs on ROI every time.
        
        2) TCO: Total Cost of Ownership. Shelf price is never the total cost of a computer. The TCO for Macs is consistently lower than any comparable PC. IOW: Watch out for that Windows PC tax gotcha!
        
        Nomura Analytics
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 8:44 pm · Reply
        
        Macs are better at ROI. So the article headline should read, “…Apple Mac’s Fusion Drive Is Not About Ca-Ching”.
        
        trondude
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 11:05 pm · Reply
        
        BTW,
        what made your limited cranial hole think I was referring to PC’s with winblows? Just to clear the air, I hate microslut and windoze, capiche?
      - Mike
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 5:30 pm · Reply
        
        So are you going to attempt to refute trondude’s point with accurate facts and analysis or not?
        
        Personally, I think he has a point. Which is why all our Mac Pros are fitted with Mercury SSDs for their startup volumes and conventional hard drives for mass storage. If Apple cared about giving its customers significantly more flexibility, it would have offered an iMac with two drive bays that could be fitted with whatever the customer desired. Sadly, Apple chose to limit its configuration options, and it continues to ruthlessly gouge customers for RAM.
        
        …and you wonder why more users don’t select the Mac? Because of lack of config options!!!
        
        Tired Of Returds
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 6:00 pm · Reply
        
        Go build your own full tower PC and S.T.F.U.
        
        Mike
        
        Friday, November 30, 2012 - 2:14 am · Reply
        
        @ Tired one: On your suggestion, perhaps our next machines will be Hackintoshes. Depends on whether Apple updates the Pro or not.
        
        If Apple doesn’t want to attract potential switchers — let alone long-time Mac productivity users like me — and assholes like you just like to insult anything that disagrees with your religious position, why bother giving Apple my money, or you my time of day? Grow up.
        
        Tired Of Returds
        
        Friday, November 30, 2012 - 9:24 pm ·
        
        Religion has nothing to do with it, you barbaric heathen. I’m not insulting you because of my “position”, I’m insulting you because you’re a whiny twit. Oh yeah, config this!
        
        GM
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 7:31 pm · Reply
        
        I wonder what the ROI will be on the iPad mini?
      - trondude
        
        Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 10:58 pm · Reply
        
        FYI..dude, I am no troll. I simply like my macs to have the most performance they can…so if I was in the market, I would configure my new iMac with the 768GB SSD, and buy an external thunderbolt 1 TB drive for storage. You can have the fusion drive. I understand how it works just fine, but its not for me. No fusion drive will beat a SSD for speed.. The extra cost doesn’t bother me, but that is just me. Got it?
        
        Bandit Bill
        
        Friday, November 30, 2012 - 12:21 am · Reply
        
        Have you ever used a machine with a fusion drive?
        
        Please share your experience.
        
        trondude
        
        Friday, November 30, 2012 - 8:40 am · Reply
        
        Have you?
  - ivid
    
    Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:55 pm · Reply
    
    Fact
- tbone
  
  Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:16 pm · Reply
  
  You still don’t understand the premise, do you?
  
  Fusion Drives are for increasing capacity above what SSD can provide while giving some speed advantage over conventional mechanical storage.
- HTML5 Gordon
  
  Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:16 pm · Reply
  
  A 1.125 terabyte SSD would be awfully expensive.
- breeze
  
  Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:20 pm · Reply
  
  When idiots talk tech
  - 8^þ
    
    Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 5:37 pm · Reply
    
    … the tech talked is idiotic.
- Michael
  
  Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:49 pm · Reply
  
  Really? You think someone spending $599 on a Mac mini can also afford to spend another $1000 to get almost the same amount of storage that comes standard in a HD configuration?
ObservationDeck

Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 4:28 pm · Reply

Oh, the humanity of it all. It brought tiers to my eyes.
- Jeff II
  
  Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 6:43 pm · Reply
  
  •) (•
  ^ ^
MarkyMark

Friday, November 30, 2012 - 12:37 am · Reply

The thing is that how this gizmo works internally is technically complex enough that its far, far beyond the ability of most people to understand – especially tech writers dashing off stories.

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