Fusion Drive or SSD - What's the difference?
Fusion Drive is a proprietary Apple-developed technology, which is based on the concept of so-called Hybrid hard drives. The Combination of fast flash memory and a mechanical Medium is here, however, is based purely on the software.
- In the case of the Fusion Drive to two separate storage media are combined: A traditional HDD and a fast SSD. These are connected via two separate connections to the motherboard.
- Due to Apple's special Software-solution, the two storage media are combined, however, to a very large total memory. Whether the data is stored on the HDD part, or on the fast SSD part is decided by the Mac autonomously on the basis of the retrieval frequency.
- Data are used very often, end up on the SSD and are faster available. On the HDD are stored in files that are rarely used.
- The biggest advantage to the Fusion Drive, is that a storage medium with large capacity and low access times for the main data.
Fusion Drive or SSD Where there are the better speed?
- The question of speed is easy to answer: It depends on the individual components. In the case of a Fusion Drive, you can based on the specified write speed for the SSD and the HDD. Frequently used files can be read in SSD speed, rarely used in HDD-Speed.
- It is somewhat different when Writing to the memory: First, all data are copied at full speed on the SSD. This is evidenced, however, be written new files to the HDD and, where appropriate, only later migrated.
- Here, the advantage of a stand-alone SSD: Both when Writing as well as reading the full speed will be used regardless of how much memory is already occupied.
A comparison between SSDs and SSHDs can be found in our next practice tip.