Fusion drive, or should I roll my own?

[ed-hawco]

The new (late 2012) Mac Mini base HDD is a large but pokey 5400 RPM drive. There's also an option to get the new fusion drive, but it doesn't say what the speed of the HDD part of it is. I'm guessing it will also be 5400 RPM. Also, I don't have a lot of faith in the Fusion drive; I don't trust a system that moves files around "automatically."

My plan before the new machines came out was to get a 240 GB flash drive from OWC and use that as the OS drive, and shoehorn in a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive for data.

I'm still thinking of going that way, but I'll have to wait for confirmation that both drives will fit in the new machine. As far as I know there is no change to the chassis, but I don't know that for sure.

Anyone here have any insight on that? (Either thing; speed of the HDD in the fusion drive, or confirmation on the physical chassis for the late 2012 Mac Mini.)

Thanks!
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Ed Hawco | www.blork.org

[Grasshopper]

[ed-hawco]

Thanks, Grasshopper. The other worry I have with the fusion drive is that I can't see there NOT being a performance hit when working with virtual machines (Parallels, VMware, etc.).

My Windows virtual machine is about 50 GB. So If I don't open that for a while, it will get moved out of the SSD portion of the fusion drive. Then one day I open it up... what happens? Does the whole 50 GB get shuffled into the SSD drive while 50 GB of other stuff gets shuffled over to the HDD? How does that not take a while? Or am I thinking about this all wrong?
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Ed Hawco | www.blork.org

[thedeske]

Apple's yet to give up much info, so hard to say if it's a good choice. Some are guessing on the tiering process. Either way it's in software. Using 2 volumes is a solid way to operate now.
I think people are used to Apple's cute names for something that works well within their garden, so bet on Fusion having a set of rules that might not fit everyone's needs.

Wait on reliable reports.

An OWC or Samsung 240 with a 750g HGST or WD Black makes a nice combo right now for performance and size.

[curt]

[CMYK]

Grasshopper writes "(the Fusion drive) is seen as one volume, so you can easily do backups with Time Machine or something like CCC."

But Apple Support FAQ says "External drives cannot be added to Fusion Drive." Doesn't that mean Time Machine or CCC can't be used with an external drive? Seems it's a major disadvantage if it's not possible to connect an external drive to a mini with a Fusion Drive. Or am I missing something?