Just over a week ago a video appeared on YouTube showing Apple’s new Fusion Drive vs. a standard hard drive, and this visual not only gave us a demo of the new Fusion Drive, but also revealed how good it really is when compared to a normal HDD. You can see the speed test below this article, which runs for just over 5 minutes although it’s good to remember that this is to show how much faster the Fusion Drive is compared to a normal hard drive. The test is using a new 2012 Mac mini with the Fusion Drive, and you’ll also gain an overview of what makes a Fusion Drive so special in this visual review.
The 2012 iMac will also include Fusion Drive support but as we reported recently, it seems that the shipping date might be delayed due to production problems. The current availability date hasn’t changed on the Apple Store, although some people are starting to doubt the chance of receiving a 2012 iMac this month, and they might have to wait until early next year. This is of course just speculation at this point, but with certain people selling iMacs and thinking one is releasing soon, it is not good news at this point.
Fusion Drive vs. SSD is what some users want to see — if you watch the video below you’ll see that the Fusion Drive makes a massive difference to overall performance, although we’ve heard from a few PR readers already that want to see the Fusion Drive compared to a solid-state drive, which would be faster if we take into account what Apple reported at the recent launch event. You can see a photo here that we took during the event when Apple revealed Fusion Drive, and this shows that Flash storage will be slightly faster than the Fusion Drive in speed tests. The difference will be price, and if you can gain similar speeds by spending less money then the Fusion Drive certainly makes sense, especially considering the way it works with the latest version of Mac OS X as well.
Would you like a Fusion Drive in your 2012 iMac or Mac mini? It is worth noting that a few PR readers also state that a separate HD and 250GB SSD would be preferred by them, and they offer a number of reasons including data loss and improvements seen with a low capacity SSD. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the comparison video below, and also the idea of a Fusion Drive compared to alternative configurations.
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