Apple iMac 2019 SSD vs Fusion Drive for Video Editing
The new Apple iMac 2019 computers are now available. If you use Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premier or Davinci Resolve you might be wondering which hard drive to purchase.
I am shocked that in 2019 apple are still producing Fusion Drives in their systems and not just going full solid state. The price of solid state drives are so cheap right now it might be time to retire the Fusion Drive.
I have been editing with Final Cut Pro X on a Late 2015 i5 iMac I purchased in 2016. This was my first apple computer and it’s been great. My late 2015 iMac has a fusion drive and it has been an overall pretty decent experience. The main reason I opted for the off-the-shelf model was basically I was unable to wait a few days to receive a custom mode. Coming from PC video editing FCPX sped up my rendering times with 1080p footage like you wouldn’t believe. Having the GPU handle a large of the rendering is amazing.
The most important thing to do if your Mac has a Fusion Drive: Back up your data The Fusion Drive combines data on an SSD and hard drive, so the loss of either is a huge problem. Apple Mac mini, 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 Dual Core, 8GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive, Mac OS, Silver, MGEQ2LL/A (Newest Version) (Renewed) 3.9 out of 5 stars 18 $644.81 $ 644. Download Fusion Drive disk format tool for Mac. DoYourData Super Eraser for Mac is a ideal tool for formatting and wiping Fusion Drive on Mac. It can help you format and wipe entire Fusion Drive by only 1click. Once the data is erased by Fusion Drive, the data is gone forever, can’t be recovered by data recovery software. Pimp Your Old Mac Pro With a Fusion Drive: I am a long time Mac user. In 2008 I bought a Mac Pro and have used it and loved it for a long time. To quote a good friend of mine, it is getting quite long in the tooth. As apple hasn’t released a new one in a while and there are not orders of mag.
My Late 2015 iMac has done really well and I have edited and produced hundreds of videos with it. Since moving into the 4k realm it still does well but I believe it could be better. When I shoot in 10bit 4K or color grade Cine-D the system performance is starting to really struggle.
Go for Speed over Storage
If you are creating video content I really believe the best way to achieve the optimum results is to customize the latest iMac 2019 modes rather than buying an off the shelf one. Not only should you upgrade the video card, ram, and opt for the new core i9 CPU – you should definitely ditch the Fusion drive and opt for the 512-1TB SSD.
Now to be clear, the Fusion drive has a part of the storage that is a solid state but it’s not the same sort of experience as an actual solid state drive. For this reason, I am choosing to go for the 512GB. The reason I am choosing the 512 over the larger SSD’s is the price. I don’t plan on actually storing anything locally on the computer.
If you’re not into video editing or you use it occasionally for simple projects the Fusion drive will do the job but I feel like it’s the bottleneck in my current iMac. My next iMac will 100% have the Solid State Drive (SSD) option.
The Best Editing Experience
One of the cool things about the recent iMac range is they all come with Thunderbolt 3 ports. This means you can connect external SSDs to the computer and get the same types of speeds you’d expect from the internal SSD. So what does this mean? It means you should purchase a Samsung SSD T5 drive and use it as a scrub drive. A scrub drive means you import and work from that external drive instead of the internal drive. This will ensure you don’t have any storage issues on your system drive and will help Final Cut Pro X function better and faster.
My 2019 iMac Specs
I plan on upgrading this year with the following computer to make video editing a breeze!
- 27″ Retina 5k Display
- 3.6GHz 8-core ninth-generation Intel Core i9 processor with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
- 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 memory
- Radeon Pro Vega 48 with 8GB of HBM2 memory
- 512GB of SSD storage
I decided not to get a 2017 iMac or the 2018 iMac Pro. I was waiting for a regular iMac with a core i9 because the price to performance will be awesome. Just make sure you upgrade the hard drive to an SSD. If you’re confused over which iMac 2019 graphics card to get I spent a day writing an article about that exact question.
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Summary
Fusion Drive vs. SSD vs. HDD lets you compare the three types of hard drives by viewing the price, speed, performance and potential risks while using each. Go and get the right hard drive for your Apple computer, Windows PC or laptop. Let EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard takes care of your lost data on the Fusion Drive, SSD and HDD with the enhanced data recovery capability.
1 Tb Fusion Drive Mac
This page offers a detailed comparison of HDD, SSD, and Fusion drive. It also offers a complete data recovery solution for the latest Fusion drives. Check out the detailed information now:
Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
---|---|
HDDs | The cheapest, oldest and most common type of drive is the humble HDD...Full steps |
SSDs | HDDs are increasingly being replaced by SSDs (or solid-state drives)...Full steps |
Fusion Drive | Fusion Drive is a combination of HDD and SSD technology...Full steps |
Fusion Drive Recovery | When lost Fusion drive data, run EaseUS recovery software > Scan drive > Restore...Full steps |
It would be easy to think that a hard drive is just a hard drive, but this would be a long way from the truth. There are, in fact, several different types of hard drives, and the one you choose will depend on a number of factors – but ultimately it comes down to balancing size, performance, and price.
HDDs
The cheapest, oldest and most common type of drive is the humble HDD (or hard disk drive). This is a decade-old technology that is still very widely used. Data is stored on rotating platters, which are read from and written to with a magnetic head that moves across the surface of the platter like the arm of a record player. Because of the fact that the disks containing data rotate, and the read/write head moves. HDDs are often referred to as mechanical drives and the fact they have moving parts means that they are audible when in use.
- Advantages: cheap, reliable, high capacities available
- Disadvantages: Slow, risk of physical damage, can be noisy in use
SSDs
HDDs are increasingly being replaced by SSDs (or solid-state drives). These take a number of forms, but they all have one thing in common – no moving parts. SSDs are less prone to damage than standard HDDs because there is no risk of a moving read/write head coming into contact with a disk, but this is not the only advantage of this type of drive. Because they are based on Flash memory, SSDs are also significantly faster than traditional hard drives, making them ideal for tasks that require better performance, such as gaming, CAD and video editing.
This extra speed comes at a cost, though. On a gigabyte for gigabyte basis, an SSD is noticeably more expensive than an HDD, but prices have started to come down significantly in recent years as the storage technology is more widely adopted. SSDs come in a number of physical forms, including those that look like regular hard drives, and those which look more like RAM memory modules. Another important factor to bear in mind is that SSDs do not last as long as traditional HDDs. This is not because they are less reliable, but rather that their very nature means that data can only be written to each section of a disk a limited number of times.
- Advantages: Fast performance, low power consumption, silent operation
- Disadvantages: Higher cost, lower capacities, limited lifespan
Fusion Drive
The final type of drive that we're interested in here is Fusion Drive. As you might guess from the name, this is a combination of HDD and SSD technology. Actually, Fusion Drive is specific to Apple; it is the company's own version of the more generic hybrid drive, but it works in very much the same way. Briefly explained, a Fusion Drive comprises a large capacity HDD and a smaller capacity SSD. For instance, 2019-model iMacs are available with Fusion Drives made up of 3TB HDD storage and 128GB SSD storage – although there are numerous other configurations available, and Fusion Drive is available for other Apple devices. While there are two physical drives making up the Fusion Drive, they appear as a single drive within macOS.
- Advantages: Cheaper than SSDs but faster than HDDs, quiet (although not silent) operation, high capacities available
- Disadvantages: Not the very best performance, can have problems, only available in certain Macs
Fusion Drive Benefits
macOS organizes the content of a Fusion Drive so files that are accessed frequently are stored on the faster SSD to speed up access. This can include documents and other files that are used most regularly, as well as apps and key files relating to the operating system itself. In some senses, a Fusion Drive is like a regular hard drive with an extremely large cache. It brings the speed benefits of installing an SSD at a greatly reduced cost; it gives users the best of both worlds.
Mac Fusion Drive Vs Ssd
It is only really possible to get a Fusion Drive by buying an iMac with one preinstalled. Some people have had success adding one to a Mac that was not originally supplied with one, but this is not something that is guaranteed to work and is a route best avoided.
Fusion Drive is fairly unique, and this means that it can have unique problems. The idea of the drive is that the HDD and SSD components that make it up are supposed to show up in Finder as a single drive, but this does not always happen. It is possible for a Fusion Drive to 'split', meaning that it will appear as two drives instead. Apple is aware that this is something that can happen from time to time, and the company offers a suggestion about how to fix it (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207584) -- however, this problem can also stem from a physical problem with a Fusion Drive, and this can be troublesome and expensive to fix.
For all of their benefits, Fusion Drive suffers from the same problems as HDDs and SSDs when it comes to data loss. No matter what type of drives you using, it is only too easy to accidentally delete a file only to later discover that it was a file you actually needed to keep. Whatever type of drive you have, it is important, to have a backup plan in place. Making regular backups of data is one of the easiest ways to prevent the loss of files. And, of course, Trash gives you something of a safety net, giving you the chance to recover files you have deleted, but what happens if you empty Trash?
This is where the EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac can help. The software can handle data recovery from HDDs, SSDs and Fusion Drive disks, helping you to get back files you may have thought you had lost forever. It does not matter whether you lost files because of accidental deletion, drive formatting, a virus, or something else, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is probably your best chance of getting back your data (there is also a version available for Windows). The software is available for just $89.95 +VAT, and there is a free trial version available so you can test out its capabilities before you decide to buy.
How to Recover Deleted/Lost Data from Fusion Drive:
Step 1. Select the Fusion Drive where you lost data and files. Click the 'Scan' button.
Step 2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will immediately scan your Fusion disk and display the scanning results on the left pane.
Fusion Drive For Macbook Pro
Step 3. In the scan results, select the file(s) and click the 'Recover Now'button to get them back.