SSDs or "Flash Drives" have, in a pretty short amount of time, become the standard in a lot of Apple's computers. MacBooks Air and Retina MacBooks Pro, for example, are all solid-state. It's not hard to understand why: SSDs are very fast, very efficient, and very reliable compared to hard drives.
But compared to a hard drive, SSDs are more expensive when comparing size. That is why the entry-level MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro come with 128 GB of storage space, whereas the non-Retina MacBook Pro offers a 500 GB hard drive, by comparison.
What about if you already own a Mac and want to upgrade to an SSD? Do you need to pay a lot of money to get the same storage or do you need to cut down on capacity? In the past, the answer was yes. You'd need to choose the lesser of those two evils. But now there's a third option.
Apple Fusion Drive
Apple currently offer an option called Fusion Drive for their new iMac computers. This combines a large hard drive with a 128GB or 256GB SSD (Flash Memory). Stop Press: Since 2015 Apple has shipped their Fusion Drives with just 24GB of Flash Memory. We don't believe that this will provide the same experience as a larger sized device, so we will continue to use a 128 or 256GB SSD. Both devices are configured together as one logical drive, so the computer thinks it only has one drive installed. Rarely-used files are written out to the hard disk, leaving the SSD with the files that are most frequently used.
Drive technology comparisons
| Read or write | Megabytes per second |
|---|---|
| Flash Drive | |
| Write Speed | 208 MB/s |
| Read speed | 140 MB/s |
| Fusion Drive | |
| Write speed | 127 MB/s |
| Read speed | 129 MB/s |
| Hard Drive | |
| Write speed | 38 MB/s |
| Read speed | 25 MB/s |
| Read or write | Megabytes per second |
|---|---|
| Flash Drive | |
| Write Speed | 440 MB/s |
| Read speed | 477 MB/s |
| Fusion Drive | |
| Write speed | 325 MB/s |
| Read speed | 482 MB/s |
| Hard Drive | |
| Write speed | 173 MB/s |
| Read speed | 174 MB/s |
The result is that you get the best of both worlds - the larger storage capacity of a conventional hard-disk drive with the immediate performance of an SSD. It's a great option. Unfortunately Apple doesn't offer this upgrade for existing models. But SimplyFixIt does. If you have a MacBook Pro or iMac that has a DVD drive, you could upgrade to Fusion Drive. We will install the necessary hardware, restore your software and system set-up and then configure your Mac so that you have high capacity & high performance. Your Mac will have never felt faster.