Fusion Drive: the best bet?

I'm a graphic designer that works on some fairly intensive Adobe Creative Suite files. I'm about to get a new iMac and am debating going between the 1TB fusion drive, or the 512 flash storage. How do Fusion drives fare with "power users" or whatever? Am I better off just sticking with the Flash storage?

     If space is a big issue and you don't want an external sitting around that might tip you toward a fusion drive. It's nice to be uncluttered. If you will do much video work you'll want an external anyway so that might tip you to a pure SSD internal.
     A pure SSD internal will be faster. Since Apple uses slow 5400 drives in their fusion drives I would not personally bother with them since I do video and need an external anyway.
     If you want pure speed an SSD is the way to go. Fusion drives are faster than non fusion but slower than SSD. Either way you want an external backup so personally I think an SSD with an one external for storage and one for backup is the way to go for most heavy users. I have four external drives in two cases and backups for them.

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Mac Fusion drive: The disk "Macintosh HD" could not be unmounted

Hi
I recently purchased a Mac Mini with the fusion drive. When I perform a verify and repair of the disk, I get the error "The disk Macintosh HD could not be unmounted". This does not occur with any of my other computers, imac or powermac (also running mountain lion). So I am wondering if I have a defective Fusion/HD or if this is simply a peculiarity of the fusion drive itself. Please comment.

If your Fusion drive can be repaired with Disk Utility, it will be shown with red lettering. If you are not seeing red lettering, then you need to boot into Recovery mode to use that Disk Utility. When you order a Fusion drive equipped Mac, there is a special version of Disk Utility included in OS X specifically for operation with Fusion Drives.
If you have any open files on the volume you wish to verify/repair, then Disk Utility will throw its hands up and give you that cannot unmount drive message. Make sure you have quit all applications you were using that may be accessing files on the disk in question.
Apple article.

Is an external hard drive the best way to keep tons of photos and songs, or does it slow down the mac too much to retrieve it?

I have an old Macbook that has a bunch of pictures and songs on it, but few videos. What I do have is slowing it down, particularly iPhoto - I sometimes have trouble editing pictures because the RAM just isn't there (I have it maxed out at 2gb), or even organizing them. I have thought of moving my pictures off the mac onto a hard-wired external drive, but have been told it makes mounting iPhoto even slower to do so. What do people do that have many thousands of pictures?

Install software such as Paragon NTFS. Regardless of the method you use, back the data up; that drive may fail at any time.
(120806)

Is the Internal Hard Drive the Best Place for the Project Files?

At the moment I have my Project Files and all the others (media, render etc.) on my external LaCie FW HD. The setup works perfectly OK.
However, would it further improve performance if I put the Project Files in the Documents folder on my eMac's HD?
Theoretically the two drives would be splitting the workload and therefore the computer should be more efficient.
I would appreciate any input detailing the advantages of different configurations and whatever system may be your favourite.
In the near future I will probably be getting a second LaCie HD - basically for general storage. How could that also be advantageously used to make FCE HD even more efficient?
Ian.

Putting the project file on the system drive is generally considered good practice. I'm not sure how much actual performance improvement you'll see, but the media might be less likely to have dropped frames. It also means, if your autosave vault is on the media drive, that you have project file backups on a second hardware device in case one fails.

Fusion Drive: How do I manage which software is on the Flash portion?

Any idea how I can see which software Mountain Lion is placing on the Solid State portion of my Fusion drive? Can I manaually manage it, as they suggested?
From the link below, it is suggested that once I add a partition to my Fusion drive, the "plus" symbol in Disk Utility to add additional partitions will be grayed out. You cannot partition the Flash storage. When I go to my (Apple configured) drive in Disk Utility, there is NO plus sign next to my drive. I haven't attempted any partitions. Is it possible that my drive was not formatted properly from the factory?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

You don't have any direct control over the allocation of data between the physical drives. It's automatic, based on your usage pattern. If you're not satisfied with that, Fusion Drive isn't right for you.

DIY Fusion drive with elgato, eyetv 3

I've got the imac 27" 2011, and I have set up a fusion drive and generally I have no issues with it.
However when watching TV (a waste of an imac i know) with elgato eyetv, it pauses every so often. Generally if you listen during this its because the main drive as reving up as its gone to sleep, I know in the system preferences I can tell it not to spin down, but that will cause the drive to eventually fail.
My questions are really to those who have a fusion drive (from the apple directly as a preinstalled build) if anyone else is running the elgato eyeTV 3 and experience anything similar?
Or to everyone else can the Fusion drive be altered so that the live TV stream gets written to the main Hard drive rather than to the SSD?
Any thoughts?

The drive will fail no matter what you do with it. That is the fact of hard drives and drives in general.
So stop putting it to sleep and stop the waiting.
No it can't be altered as that is what a Fusion drive is. The System determines what data gets written to each drive not the user. If you want to make that choice then you should not be using a Fusion drive setup.
Also with ANY Fusion drive When, Not If, Either drive Fails they both fail and you are left with Nothing. Kind of like RAID 0 (Zero).
I personally would never use a Fusion drive setup. Better to have a slightly bigger SSD and a secondary spinning drive to store data on. Like moving your "i" tunes, photo and other User/library files, Doc and Downloads, to the spinner and leaving the SSD for the OS and programs.

Which configuration of iMac 27" ? Fusion drive or not ? RAM upgrade ?

I'd love to get a new 27" iMac for my Mother, but cannot decide if the higher i7 processor (3.5) is worth the price, and cannot decide if the 3TB "Fusion" drive is worth the extra $350.
The retail Apple stores stock the i7 only with the 3TB Fusion drive, the better graphics card, and stock 8GB of RAM, but one can configure the machine if ordering on-line via the link below. Her husband will reimburse me or it will be a gift. Money is not the issue.... just whether or not the money is worth spending.
One last thing: The apple store rep said that the "Geniuses" have to do the RAM upgrade, say from 8GB to 32GB because the 21" unit has to be opened. So the consumer doing the RAM upgrade will void the warranty. Yet I see website indicating that the 21" has a nice convenient door to open and the RAM is user-upgradable without voiding the warranty. Which is true ?
Apple wants to charge $600 (parts and labor) for the RAM upgrade to 32GB. But Crucial has 32MB of this RAM for under $300 with a lifetime warranty. Is there a reason to use the RAM from Apple ?
LINK: http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?product=ME089LL/A&step=config

1. 27" iMac with 3.4Ghz i7 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 775M with 2GB video memory is just $200 more than 27" iMac with 3.2Ghz i5 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M with 1GB video memory. How much is her time worth per hour? If it's for business use, it pays for itself quickly. Same opinion for the 'build-to-order' upgrades in speed and video available on the 27" i7.
2. Fusion drive is a hybrid combining 128GB SSD with either a 1TB or 3TB rotating platter hard drive.
Analysis and review of Fusion drive in a 2012 iMac: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6679/a-month-with-apples-fusion-drive
Conclusions and performance are on pages 5 and 6 of the review.
3. 27" iMac RAM is "user-replacable", quoting from the 2013 'Important Product Information' addendum to the manual:
"Do Not Make Repairs Yourself
Your iMac doesn’t have any user-serviceable parts, except for memory, which is user-replaceable in 27-inch models only. Do not attempt to open your iMac. If your iMac needs service, contact an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for service.
If you open your iMac or install items other than memory in 27-inch models, you risk damaging your equipment. Such damage isn’t covered by the limited warranty on your iMac."
quoted from http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1662/en_US/imac_late2013_ipig.pdf
OWC video of the 27" RAM upgrade installation: http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/imac_27inch_late_2012_mem_m/
4. If it's for business, go for the i7 and the video upgrade.
5. I'd do the upgrade myself, purchasing from a reliable vendor of Apple RAM such as crucial.com or macsales.com. I have no experience with the other vendor you mentioned, RAMfinder.com. Factory-installed RAM offers the pricey convenience of having a machine configured by you online and shipped directly to your mother in a few days with no one else needing to be involved. I'd avoid any Apple salesperson who apparently doesn't know the 27" iMac product well enough to give you the truth about user-installable RAM upgrades. OWC (macsales.com) will purchase system-pull original RAM allowing you to recoup a small portion of the cost of the upgrade, though nothing close to the resale price of the RAM.
Message was edited by: kostby

Fusion Drive 4TB + SSD m4 512 Go DEAD can't reformat

Hello,
I have an iMac 27 late 2010 i5 3.6 with 16 Go of RAM running 10.8.3
For Christmas, I received a M4 SSD 512 Go and decided to replace the 2TB in my iMac with a 4TB and create a Fusion Drive.
The operation worked beautifully and my iMac became incredibly fast, which was the goal.
Yesterday, the iMac did not start and I got the white screen with the spinning wheel. After reading about zapping the pram and Vram, nothing worked.
I booted from an external hard drive with Mac os X 10.8.2 and ran Disk Util to check the drive. I got a lot of red lines in the report and got the error Disk Utility can't repair this disk. back , reformat and restore.
I was able to copy some of the files on the drive and decided to reformat the drive.
Everytime I try to reformat the drive (4.4tB Fusion Drive) the mac shuts down and restarts.
I tried to un fuse the fusion drive and I get the same result. the screen goes black, the computer restarts and displays that the mac encountered a problem and had to restart.
when I type the commande in terminal diskutil cs file, I see the logical volume group.
When I do a diskutil cs Delete Volume xxxxxx xxxx xxx x x x x x x x
started CoreStorage operation on disk 2 iMac
Unmounting disk2
Removing Logical Volume from Logical Volume Group
then the mac shuts down and restarts.
it took me 2 hours to crack the beast open to perform the disk implant last christmas and it was scary. I thought I would never manage to close it properly.
I understand that this operation voided the warranty (i have the Apple Care for 3 years).
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Phil

Thanks for your answers.
I still don't know if it was the SSD or the HD that was faulty but I found a solution via this post
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21492423#21492423
Jerome Tremblay
This solved my questionRe: Unable to reformat/repartition Fusion Drive
Mar 12, 2013 11:05 AM (in response to Topher Kessler)
@Topher : It did not work, and it failed with POSIX errors similar to the zeroDisk message I posted above.
However, While I was unable to "cleanly" solve my problem, I managed to reset everything by booting in single-user mode from an external hard drive (with cmd-S) and overwriting the disk directly with
cat /dev/random > /dev/disk0 cat /dev/random > /dev/disk1
Then I rebooted and I could reformat the drives (actually, I created another fusion drive using these directives).
I was able to reformat the drives as a Fusion Drive. My time Machine backup was only a week old but it worked perfectly. I was able to add the rest via my Backblaze subscription.
Don't know how long the Fusion drive will last but I am prepared with my backups in case it happens.
Phil

Fusion Drive on a 2010 iMac with 2tb HDD & 256gb SSD

Hi,
well basicailly the title says it all!
I have a 2010 iMac with the 256gb SSD and 2TB HDD which to me seems like it would be great option for the Fusion Drive...
Does anyone have any ideas on how I could make the drives work like the new Fusion Drive?
I've seen the Macworld Tutorial on a DIY Fusion Drive but i'm still not sure if doing that will work in the same way as the preinstalled 2012 iMac Fusion Drive... I know that Mac OSX will treat the combined drives as one, but in terms of moving files depending upon their usage is another matter.
If the Macworld step by step is followed will Mountain Lion handle frequently used files / apps like the apple presentation states or will it just use the drives as one and not increase the performance of my machine?
Any help on this would be much appreciated, especially if anyone has followed the Macworld steps etc!
Thanks
Darren

Thanks fir the reply, I thought with the fusion drive the SSD and HDD were two seperate storage devices seen by OSX as one volume, and the software determins where the files most used will be placed and accessed from.
I've read a bit about this here;
http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/ss/Setting-Up-A-Fusion-Drive-On-Your- Current-Mac.htm
but would be great to hear first hand experience!!
With this DIY approach it appears that the same functionality of the 2012 iMacs is achieved but simply not using the older Disk Utility, but a newer version only included on the newer models...

Unable to install Windows on an 2010 iMac with home-made Fusion Drive

Hi there,
I've been very happy using mi iMac eversince I installed the SSD alongside the HDD. Only recently I tried to install Windows 7 but it doesn't seem to work. The installer runs, it seems as though Windows is installing but it doesn't ever seem to be able to boot. I've tried countless times. Everytime it boots to Windows it shows nothing but just a black screen with the cursor blinking at the top left corner.
Now, when I home-made the Fusion Drive the Mac OS was only 10.8.2 or older and I know that with 10.8.3 Apple has made improvements towards boot camp and especially the 3TB HDDs. I wonder if this could have anything to do.
Anyway, please enlighten me as to what is it that I need to do to make it work. I've been reading something about the position in which the Windows partition resides compared to GUID and EFI but honestly I have just the tiniest idea about all that. Just for the record, the following is what shows in the Terminal after diskutil list command:
diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         255.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         942.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         57.0 GB    disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Fusion Drive           *1.2 TB     disk2
Hope you can help..!

Hello again, by reading a couple of posts I learnt the steps and so, using an external OS I repartitioned the two internal drives making sure the Windows partition wasn't part of the Fusion Drive. I was very excited as I was sure it would work and went ahead and started the Win7 installation even before the MacOS was restored into the iMac.
No good news though. The installer run as expected however, when the time came for the iMac to boot from the newly installed Windows7, all I saw was a blank screen and a blinking dash at the top left corner of the screen.
Lastly, this morning I woke up to see that my old system was fully restored from Time Machine external back up. I also leart that using the Boot Camp Assistant I could remove the Windows partition that I created on Terminal from the external OS, which was surprising, I honestly thought that that partitioning arrangement would be off-limits for the Boot Camp Assistant.
Still, I haven't been succesfull installing Windows back to my Mac, can anybody help?

What is the best way to make a list of addresses for envelopes or labels? Address book, numbers or pages?

What is the best way to make a list of addresses for envelopes and labels? Address book, Pages or Numbers?

I liek your idea of having multiple images in a grid. I think
that would be the best bet as you mentioned. Having one big picture
would be hard to distinguish the sub-areas with mouse coordinates.
I think checking the coordinates for the mouse would be very
tedious because I would have to check for the left boundary, the
right, top, and bottom for each sub-area!
What do you mean by using button components and reskinning.
Is this simply using buttons and changing the way they look? I'm
just trying to save time and memory, because if I had a 10 by 10
grid, thats a hundred buttons. Wouldn't that slow down the machine
alot? And for that matter wouldn't having a grid of 10 by 10 images
also by the same deal?
Thanks for the input, I'm just trying to find the most
efficient way to do it.

Hi, I need help extracting a video in the best HD, got this not so great test:

Hi everyone,
I've recently purchesed the Premiere Elements 9,
I use the Panasonic HDC HS700 which is a great camera...
I tried like a million times to export a video with different HD settings but I can't find the ultimate to show the real quality of My HDC HS700
check out this clip I just made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Jo6UQY9No
I used MPEG export with 1280 resolution,
what are the parameters that need to be adjusted to get the best out of the export?
I've tried the H.264 codec but it keeps messing around with the size of the video so it plays like a square 4:3 really messes up the original 16:9
though I was using 16:9 settings...
I hope I could get some help here.
Thanks in advance,
Radion.

For the Export choices, one starts with what their delivery scheme is, say to BD disc, or perhaps streaming Video for the Web. That will dictate much of what one will choose next.
Within those two delivery schemes, there are choices also. For the BD, if one is working exclusively in PrE, then Export/Share is not necessary, as PrE has BD authoring capabilities. If one is using another program to author, then there are two allowed choices: BD-compliant H.264, or HD MPEG-2, which is BD-compliant. For streaming media, then there are many choices, from WMV, to Flash (FLV), to DivX, to H.264. Each has pluses and minuses, and much might depend on the Web page, on which one will display the AV file. If, for instance, the Web page has an embedded QT Player, then the H.264 in a MOV wrapper is probably the best bet, while if there is an embedded Flash player, the FLV would be the choice. If one wishes a self-contained Flash player, then a program, like Adobe Flash, can bundle the FLV into an SWF file.
Knowing exactly how you need to deliver the output file will get you (and us) started on picking the best format/CODEC and then the internal settings for Export/Share.
Good luck,
Hunt

What is the best way to make a clickable grid

What would be the best way to make a clickable area that can
differentiate between discrete parts of the area when clicked on.
In other words, instead a having multiple buttons in a row that the
user can click on, is there a way to have an area that has lines to
distinguish the different areas(buttons) but that acts as though
there were multiple consecutive buttons?
For example, if I wanted to graphically simulate the buttons
on a phone but without using buttons. Instead use some kind of grid
or area that is divided into multiple sub areas that can
distinguish the discrete positions (each button on the phone, or
sub-area).
Thank you,
Salchichasa

I liek your idea of having multiple images in a grid. I think
that would be the best bet as you mentioned. Having one big picture
would be hard to distinguish the sub-areas with mouse coordinates.
I think checking the coordinates for the mouse would be very
tedious because I would have to check for the left boundary, the
right, top, and bottom for each sub-area!
What do you mean by using button components and reskinning.
Is this simply using buttons and changing the way they look? I'm
just trying to save time and memory, because if I had a 10 by 10
grid, thats a hundred buttons. Wouldn't that slow down the machine
alot? And for that matter wouldn't having a grid of 10 by 10 images
also by the same deal?
Thanks for the input, I'm just trying to find the most
efficient way to do it.

REST API and best bets / query rules

Is there a bug in this? I can not get best bet results regardless of the query string. For example, the following (according to MSDN documentation) should process the query rules and return a best bet. But it doesnt. Am I doing something
wrong in the query? It only seems to return ordinary results. Performing the same search via Sharepoint's UI returns the best bet at the top.
$.ajax({
url: "http://myserver/sites/mysite/_api/search/query/?processbestbets=true&enablequeryrules=true&querytext='" + searchText + "'",
type: 'GET',
headers: {
"accept": "application/json; odata=verbose"
success: myCallback,
error: function(data) {
alert(data.responseXML.text);

Hi Scott,
With EnableQueryRules and ProcessBestBets set to true in the search rest api, we can get the promoted results(best bets) in SharePoint 2013.
I recommend to type the search rest api URL in the browser directly and then check if the best bets are displayed at the top of the search results.
It will not displayed inside the table for normal results.
Please also make sure that the query text matches the query rule condition.
Thanks,
Victoria
TechNet Community Support
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact
[email protected]

Keyword/best bet migration to 2013

Has anyone found a way to migrate/upgrade keywords in a site collection from 2010 to 2013? I have seen mention of the ability to convert the keyword/bestbet to a query rule. Thanks for any suggestions.

Hi,
According to your description, my understanding is that you want to migrate the best bets/keywords from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013.
As we all know, the best bets/keywords are changes to query rules in SharePoint 2013.
I recommend to export the best bets/keywords to CSV file and then import
best bets as Query Rule in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell.
More references:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/47cb1c9c-11af-47c9-9e53-06abe9dbf1b9
http://sprider.org/2014/04/23/importing-best-bets-as-query-rule-in-sharepoint-2013-using-powershell/
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Import-QueryRules-fc2d125d
Thanks,
Victoria
Forum Support
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact
[email protected]
Victoria Xia
TechNet Community Support

Fusion Drive: the best bet?

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