Imac Fusion Drives

FUSION DRIVES are no longer used by Apple, but they were used for Imacs from 2012 to 2020. During the early years of the Fusion Drive, SSDs were much more expensive than traditional hard drives, as well as having much less storage capacity than a hard drive. However, much has changed since 2012, and a fusion drive device no longer makes sense .

A fusion drive usually has a slow HDD in most of its storage capacity, while a 128gb SSD serves as a cache in most cases. Although you are supposed to benefit from having a faster SSD as well as HDD, the actual storage portion of your device is mostly carried out by the slower HDD, meaning that you don’t get the true speed benefits that you would expect from your SSD.

Moreover, professional assets and files may experience inefficient caching when split between HDD and SSD components. As a result, workflow is hindered and any potential speed advantages are negated. For instance, running a pro tools session demonstrates this issue. The fusion drive cannot predict which samples will be needed at different points, particularly in larger sessions with high RAM usage, resulting in sporadic playback.

Fusion drives only work in tandem so that if the SSD cache component fails then the file system is lost. It’s recommended that fusion drives are replaced and up until that time machine backups are performed.