New iMac -Advisability of Fusion Drive

Purchasing new iMac.
Does anyone have view on the merits of Fusion Drive as opposed to upgrading to 2.9ghz processor. Or is that not the right question?

Apple’s Fusion Drive explained:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/achieving-fusion-with-a-service-training-do c-ars-tears-open-apples-fusion-drive/
Review and comparisons between the 21.5” and 27” new iMacs:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/12/harder-better-faster-stronger-a-review-of-t he-27-imac/
MacWorld review of 27” iMacs with different hard drives:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/mac/news/?newsid=3420278&olo=email

Similar Messages

Finder is really slow ( 15 sec.) after mavericks update on brand new iMac 27" WITH fusion drive...

When looking up files it's fine, but when trying to save or open anything through ANY program, i.e. Adobe CS6 programs, Microsoft Word, but also Apple software, finder is really slow (15 sec. or more of the same spinning beach ball) after the OSX Mavericks update on my brand new iMac 27" WITH fusion drive... This ***** really bad because it totally disturbs the smooth workflow I bought the iMac for in the first place...
Any suggestions?
Already tried 'clearing the plist file' through terminal; didn't work... Rebooting (obviously), didn't work.
Will there be a fix soon?
It's costing me way to much time waiting for the finder to show it's content when working.
Any official word from Apple on this?

I had a similar problem. Tried repairing disk permissions, tried cleaning up with onyx and applejack with no luck. Finally what did work was simply starting up in safe mode (hold shift key down after restart) and it sorted itself out
Hope this works for you

I just bought the new IMAC with the Fusion Drive 3t. Can I use the Bootcamp systemwith it? If not what do you suggest? I relly need the bootcamp for quicken

Good morning,
I just bought the new IMAC with the Fusion drive 3T. Can I use it with bootcamp beacuse I need for Quicken?If not any suugestion?

You can't use Boot Camp in 3 TB drives. You can download VirtualBox, Parallels or VMware Fusion and install Windows on a virtual machine. See > https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3321

Can you attach an external HD to the new iMac with a fusion drive?

I'm trying to decide how to configure the new iMac I am going to buy. Can you attach an external HD to an iMac with a fusion drive? I'm assuming it would be fine, but since the fusion drive is new, I don't want a nasty surprise. Some of the new Mac Minis now have fusion drives, so has anyone added an external drive to it?

This was a concern expressed in this thread: Worrying reply to Apples FAQ on new Fusion Drive
However, Apple has since amended the FAQ, clarifying their earlier Fusion confusion.
Therefore I believe the answer is yes, you can add an external USB HD. If Apple would only state that explicitly in this document, it would eliminate all doubt.

Time Machine stalls on first backup of new iMac with 3TB Fusion Drive

I've got a brand new 27" iMac with latest patches up to OS X 10.9.1. I've loaded about 500GB of data onto this machine and wanted to make an intial Time Machine backup, so I connected a brand new 4TB Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 external hard drive, formatted the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), pointed Time Machine at it, and let it go. It ran up to about 30GB before I walked away. When I came back maybe 8–10 hours later it was still stopped at about 30GB. I stopped it, and tried again. This time it just went a couple of GB before halting. I can hear the external drive stop spinning because it isn't being accessed.
I also have a new 2TB Western Digital My Passport USB 3.0 external drive, so I formatted that as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and tried setting it as the Time Machine drive instead. Again Time Machine gets a little way into the backup before stalling and proceeding no further. I think this rules out the drive, since both drives behave the same way.
I also have Super Duper installed on this machine, so I tried doing a full disk copy to the WD drive and this worked flawlessly. This suggests that nothing is wrong with the drives themselves, as does the successful check of all three disks with Disk Utility.
I've checked "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" in Energy Saver. I've unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". I've checked "Enable Power Nap". I set Time Machine back to using the 4TB Seagate Drive and have been letting it run as long as it wants to. It got up to 13.32GB this morning before seeming to stall this morning. 10 hours later when I got from work it's still at 13.32 GB and it still says "About 7 hours remaining", just as it did at 8:30am.
I've read a bunch of discussions on here about issues like this, which is where I came up with some of the things I've tried. So far, nothing has worked. Can anyone suggest a working solution? It seems like the Time Machine software just isn't workin

Pondini's site is excellent, but didn't happen to cover this problem (or Mavericks in particular as of yet). But I did call AppleCare support as you suggested, rkaufman87, where I was quickly escalated since I'd already tried the things the first tier support people start with. After some investigation via screen sharing and inspection of my system log (which suggested the stall involved issues with the index) the main change we made was to clear out the Time Machine preference files and Spotlight's cache before rebooting and trying again. This time the backup completed without stalling, and has continued to work ever since. Thanks for encouraging me to call support!

Is it possible to install win7 on a new imac with 3Tb fusion drive

I know it was impossible without discarding the fusion system before.
I read it was possible with windows 8 since mountain lion
But is ti possible with win 7 (i have a licence).
Thanks.

any answer ??? please ?

HT5446 is my iMac 21.5intel, fusion drive compatable

.Thank you in advance just wondering if my Imac can have fusion drive, seen a youtube vid with fusion drive but it was 27 inch, so I am not sure and on the Apple store didnt notice it as an up grade for the 21.5 inch, because of size maybe motherboard another size unless I over looked it, Why do I want it no clue always used a pc I bought this Imac cause it looked really nice and talked to people they love Apple products, also figured never see used macs for sale like dells left and right, so I figured they must last forever. but back to the fusion drive just like the speed, I also like it to do photoshop, final cut,Imovie. can someone tell if I need to run a compatability test on it from apple and a link to it, or looking through the "about this Mac"
Thank You
Ed

From what is written in the Apple Store page for iMac 21.5 and 27" models, the 21.5 can be equipped with a 1TB Fusion drive, or 256GB flash, or 512GB flash, as options. There are more BTO options for the 27" model.
Not sure what an Apple Store would charge you to upgrade a new iMac to one of those, but you could call ahead and set an appointment with a product specialist, a Genius, to discuss the matter. If they can do it, then you'd probably arrange to take the computer in so someone could do the job and not interfer with the AppleCare plan coverage. Authorized persons should be the only ones to open up and upgrade; however the BTO models in the 21.5" would be the normal path to get that upgrade. Just like RAM, there is no user access to upgrade. (Built-to-Order ships from an Apple Store online.)
So that'd be my suggestion, ask them directly at an official Apple Store or see if Apple Support online http://www.apple.com/support/contact/ can answer the question for you, to see if the product can be upgraded by an Apple tech in a store near you.
Good luck & happy computing!

How can I install Photoshop CS5 on a new iMac with no disc drive

How can I install Photoshop CS5 on a new iMac with no disc drive?

Hi,
Please copy this Link http://trials2.adobe.com/AdobeProducts/PHSP/12/osx10/Photoshop_12_LS1.dmg?PID=2159997
Now open Adobe.com and go to Products Trials. Click on Acrobat Try now and once the download page appears then paste the above mentioned link in the address bar and then press Enter. Download should start immediately.
Please let me know if it helps.
regards,
Abhijit

How do I download/install Photoshop & Premiere Elements 10 on new iMac with no disc drive?

My iMac hard drive recently failed and I lost everything. I just bought one of the new iMacs with no disc drive. I had purchased Photoshop CS5 in 2011 but it came with CD's for install. I stil have them but it doesn't do me any good since there is no disc drive to put them in on the new computer. How can I install Photoshop using my serial number from my original purchase? I downloaded the CS6 trial version and when I try to activate it with my old serial number it says it is invalid.

There are links to trial installers on pages:
http://prodesigntools.com/all-adobe-cs5-direct-download-links.html
http://prodesigntools.com/photoshop-elements-10-direct-download-links-pse-premiere-pre.htm l
Very carefully read and follow the instructions on the pages!
Download and install the trials, launch and activate them with your serial number then do 'Help > Updates'.

After attempting secure erase, iMac w/homemade fusion drive won't boot from *anything*

2009 iMac with homemade fusion drive (SSD installed in optical bay). Was working fine with Yosemite until I attempted to secure erase it before giving away the machine.
Now the drive is borked. Disk utility could make no sense of it, can't reformat, it can't repartition it. And now it has completely stopped booting. I cannot even get it to boot of an external USB drive anymore (the original operation was performed while booted from a Yosemite installer drive on a USB stick).
I've reset the PRAM, reset the SMC, and just nothing. All boots are attempted from internal messed up fusion drive, which eventually ends in the "prohibitory sign".
I'm not even sure what to try at this point. Any suggestions out there?

Thank you for the reply. I have since resolved the problem, although not in the most satisfactory way.
Here's what I did:
Pulled both drives out of the iMac, put them into a USB dock, and reformatted each one. Both drives appeared at this point to be fine.
Reinstalled both drive into the iMac, and started up from a USB drive. No problem.
Recreated the fusion drive from the terminal. No problem.
Now, because I am a glutton for punishment, I tried wiping the fusion drive again. This time, part way in, it kernel panicked. Luckily, I was able to reboot once again to the external drive.
At this point, the fusion drive was in the exact same messed up state as when I started. Disk Utility app could do nothing with it.
Fortunately, this time I went right to the command line, and was able to fix things up and recreate the fusion drive before anything else bad happened.
I gave up on wiping the drive for now. If I need to do so in the future, I will disable the fusion drive and try to wipe each physical drive separately.
I should note that this iMac has never given a spot of trouble before now, so I am highly suspicious of the way disk utility tries to wipe a fusion drive. I certainly won't try it again. (I don't know if it has ever kernel-panicked before in the 5 years I've owned it).

I just purchased a new iMac and my Hard Drive is not showing on my desktop.

I just purchased a new iMac and my Hard Drive is not showing on my desktop. It doesn't show up on a finder window either.

No. It's what I've named my boot drive.
New Finder windows can be set to open any selected volume or folder of your choice.

The new iMac has no cd drive so how do I download software that I have?

The new iMac has no cd drive so how do I download software that I have? I have adobe photoshop elements 11 and baboo drawing pad and they both have CDs to install.

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
The new iMac hasn't got a SuperDrive to insert CDs and DVDs, so you can't install software from CDs and DVDs.
Instead, you have different ways to install the applications you have on DVDs:
1. Buy any external optical drive for your Mac and use it to install your applications.
2. If you have another PC or Mac, you can save the external optical drive cost and use Remote Disc > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5287?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US Note that this may be a bit slow

More boot camp problems new 5k imac 3 tera fusion drive

there seems to be problems with Yosemite and boot camp assistant
i'm cross posting this to the iMac forum but I spent hours online with apple tech today and none of the several foks I talked to there had even seen a 5k 27" yet and my call back from Cupertino and engineering is no till tomorrow so I thought I should post here too
MMy bto 5k shipped from China sunday night and arrived in Maine this morning.... Amazing when you think about it for a bto
iinstallation and set up we're going fine and I started up boot camp assistant to create a temp boot camp while I wait for my thunder bay 4 box to take the drives for my old Mac pro when boot camp will have a1 tera SSD all to itself....
so carved off a 700 gig boot camp partition which the assistant formatted fat I then plugged is the lighting to FW adapter in a LaCie 2 tera fw 800 drive to act as a bridge to my LaCie DVD burner which uses the old fw400 cables and inserted my new shrink wrap win 8.1 retail 64 DVD and up comes the win 8 install in very tiny type in a tiny window which got a bit of a laugh out of me.
And I go through it to the point of selecting that boot camp partition and then said it could not use a fat partition and I should reformat it from the win 8.1 installer which I did and then it said it could not use and unknown partition so I said great and booted back to 10-10 and the boot camp tool to put things back and it said it could not I then went to disk tools and it also said the 3tera fusion could not be either reformatted or put back to a single partition I was on with tech support where I went up through 4 levels of support due to the 5k bto which most had no knowledge of. We tried the optioncommand r to get to DT and the same problem as did going to reinstall from the net which after a 30 min down load could not reformat either it is now kicked to Cupertino with a call back tomorrow
( At this point all I want to do is put the computer back in the condition it was in when i started with a plain Yosemite on an unpartitioned 3 tera fusion... Then deal with boot camp when it can have its own drive)
am betting it will take a Unix comand line to reformat but be aware there may be boot camp issues with my configuration
and any help here will be great fully received

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         2.3 TB     disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:          Apple_CoreStorage                         708.1 GB   disk1s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s5
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *2.4 TB     disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
                                 B413D0D6-817A-438A-B60A-CAE9B7AC4703
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *15.6 GB    disk3
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 ABOOTCAMP               15.6 GB    disk3s1
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            IR3_CCSA_X64FRE_EN-... *4.1 GB     disk4
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk5
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk5s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data Union                   500.1 GB   disk5s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Shimmo                  499.6 GB   disk5s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk5s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Orange                  500.1 GB   disk5s5
   6:                  Apple_HFS Newcastle               499.4 GB   disk5s6
Ls-iMac:~
and
diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (2 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 1869B0B4-B850-413D-8726-41934602250B
|   =========================================================
|   Name:         Macintosh HD
|   Status:       Online
|   Size:         2412498640896 B (2.4 TB)
|   Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
|   |
|   +-< Physical Volume 7F622DCA-6D45-4940-BE17-893BB57CF948
|   |   ----------------------------------------------------
|   |   Index:    0
|   |   Disk:     disk0s2
|   |   Status:   Online
|   |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
|   |
|   +-< Physical Volume 50B22A72-6463-4CEA-9189-C708884DF658
|   |   ----------------------------------------------------
|   |   Index:    1
|   |   Disk:     disk1s2
|   |   Status:   Online
|   |   Size:     2291509788672 B (2.3 TB)
|   |
|   +-> Logical Volume Family 9064DC1E-5E23-4887-9B99-46507C4A15AF
|       ----------------------------------------------------------
|       Encryption Status:       Unlocked
|       Encryption Type:         None
|       Conversion Status:       NoConversion
|       Conversion Direction:    -none-
|       Has Encrypted Extents:   No
|       Fully Secure:            No
|       Passphrase Required:     No
|       |
|       +-> Logical Volume B413D0D6-817A-438A-B60A-CAE9B7AC4703
|           ---------------------------------------------------
|           Disk:                  disk2
|           Status:                Online
|           Size (Total):          2407000178688 B (2.4 TB)
|           Conversion Progress:   -none-
|           Revertible:            No
|           LV Name:               Macintosh HD
|           Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
|           Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 510FD803-3431-4C23-9BAA-1D1CA0C0B065
    =========================================================
    Name:         Winboot
    Status:       Online
    Size:         708089155584 B (708.1 GB)
    Free Space:   707736829952 B (707.7 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 033CEB50-621B-474F-9AB0-D4FC410A9718
        Index:    0
        Disk:     disk1s4
        Status:   Online
        Size:     708089155584 B (708.1 GB)
Ls-iMac:~

Best way to install Windows 8 on an iMac with 1tb Fusion drive

I just ordered my first iMac. Not my first mac, I have owned numerous Mac laptops in the past but am finally ready to make the switch for my main desktop .
Now I need to installed windows 8.1 because I need to run visual studio. That is literally the only app I need to run.
Ordered with the below specs:
27" imac
i7 processor
1tb fusion drive
16gb ram.
I am thinking of two options:
1) use parallels or vmware fusion and create a 200gb windows virtual machine and give this machine 6gb ram (4gb is recommend by more couldn't hurt). since the fusion drive works at a block level, my windows OS and vs should parts of the VM file should get moved to the SSD as I will be using it a lot. my main goal is max performance. i will be working on metro apps (not windows phone apps). any recommendation on which is better? parallels or vmware? stability and performance is key. i don't need any fancy UI integration and i won't run any games. happy to run windows in fullscreen mode.
2) create a 200gb partition and run bootcamp. cleary more stable but will it be faster than above because i am assuming the ssd caching will not working here?
per mircorosft website they give instructions for both options above, but i am looking for realworld experience in what will get be most stability in terms of network IO (working on UPNP apps so need stable network bridging) and then performance is key.
HDD size is not a big deal for me as most of my media lives in my synology NAS.

virtual machine will be more stable
bootcamp will be faster but the only place you will notice is if you play new 3d games on diwndows

IMac with 3TB Fusion drive will not partition under Boot Camp

I have a 27" iMac with a 3TB Fusion drive and I am using 10.8.4.
I am trying to install Windows 8 Pro with Boot Camp. Everything starts well enough, but once I get to "Create a Partition for Windows" and setting a 505 GB Windows partition, it begins the process, but then seems to stop progressing with the status indicator pretty much stopped at a point directly under the "d" in the "Status: Partitioning disk.."
I've let it run for the past 1.5 hours and it hasn't budged.
This is not my first attempt at doing this on this machine. I tried manually partitioning with Disk Utility which pretty much ended up in a disaster that I was able to repair with some difficulty. That was covered in this thread.
I realize that 3TB drives were not supported under 10.8.3, but I thought that was fixed. Am I wrong?

This is a bit of a guess and you might have do a bit of further reading to understand what I am trying to say but basically:
When you buy a Mac - its Hard Disks come partitioned using the GPT partitioning scheme that is used for the UEFI boot process (All new Windows 8 badged computers have UEFI now as well - Macs have been using it for years). This is opposed to the old MBR partitioning scheme that was used with the BIOS boot process.
There are quite a few limitations of the MBR partitioning scheme including:
1. A limit of 4 partitions per volume
2. A limit of 2 TB per partition
3. Poor support for AHCI
When you run Boot Camp - it turns your partitioning into a hybrid of the two, so you get stuck with all the limitations of MBR - with the second bullet point above I suspect of giving you issues.
You have a couple of possible solutions:
1. Test with having all partitions less than 2 TB
or
2. (Technical) Try and install Windows 8 in EFI mode - its a bit tricky at the moment and a little bit of work - but I have it working on my MacBook Pro (although I do have nVidia graphics driver issues that you may or may not encounter as well). See my wiki at multiboot.info for links if you want to attempt this

New iMac -Advisability of Fusion Drive

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