Fusion drive now comes standard on some imac and mac mini models and is a configurable option on others.
Imac hybrid drive.
Fusion drives cost 200 and 320 for the 1tb and 3tb versions respectively though the latter is only available on the 27 inch imac.
According to the paper this hybrid storage system unifies a high speed ssd and a large capacity hard drive with several design considerations of which one has been used in the fusion drive.
Fusion drive a storage option on some imac and mac mini computers combines a hard drive and flash storage in a single volume for improved performance and storage capacity.
Apple s fusion drive is also a hybrid drive offering 1 tb or 3 tb of mechanical drive space alongside 128 gb of solid state flash storage.
21 5 inch 4 1ghz processor 1tb fusion drive.
Hybrid drives can be cheaper than solid state drives because they contain a smaller amount of solid state memory.
Retina 5k 27 inch 4 1ghz processor 1tb fusion.
Fusion drives have a small solid state drive for commonly accessed files and quick startups.
The fusion drive comes as standard with the following imacs.
A hybrid drive is a single drive that combines a ssd with a hard drive.
For even faster performance you can configure a model that uses only flash storage ssd.
Why would you want a hybrid.
It has been reported that the design of fusion drive has been influenced by a research project called hystor.
Apple s fusion drive design incorporates proprietary features with limited documentation.
These seem to mostly max out at about 8gb of ssd but can cost under 100 for a 1tb 8gb model.
I tested an imac with a fusion drive in an apple store and it booted in probably less than a third of.