Fusion Drive
Data storage technology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Data storage technology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fusion Drive is a type of hybrid drive technology created by Apple Inc. It combines a hard disk drive with a NAND flash storage (solid-state drive of 24 GB or more)[1] and presents it as a single Core Storage managed logical volume with the space of both drives combined.[2]
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The operating system automatically manages the contents of the drive so the most frequently accessed files are stored on the faster flash storage, while infrequently used items move to or stay on the hard drive.[3] For example, if spreadsheet software is used often, the software will be moved to the flash storage for faster user access. In software, this logical volume speeds up performance of the computer by performing both caching for faster writes and auto tiering for faster reads.
The Fusion Drive was announced as part of an Apple event held on October 23, 2012, with the first supporting products being two desktops: the iMac and Mac Mini with OS X Mountain Lion released in late 2012.[3] Fusion Drive remains available in subsequent models of these computers, but was not expanded to other Apple devices: the latest MacBook and Mac Pro models use exclusively flash storage, and while this was an optional upgrade for the mid-2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro discontinued by Apple, it replaced the standard hard disk drive in October 2021 instead of complementing it in the fashion of Fusion Drive. As of November 2021, no Mac offers a fusion drive.
Release date | HDD storage | Flash storage | |
---|---|---|---|
Mac Mini | Late 2012 | 1 TB | 128 GB |
Late 2014 | |||
iMac (all models) |
Late 2012 | ||
Late 2013 | |||
2014 | |||
iMac (27-inch non-Retina) |
Late 2012 | 3 TB | |
Late 2013 | |||
iMac (27-inch Retina) |
Late 2014 | ||
Mid-2015 | |||
iMac | Late 2015 | 1 TB | 24 GB |
2 TB | 128 GB | ||
Mid 2017 | 1 TB | 32 GB | |
2 TB | 128 GB | ||
3 TB | |||
Early 2019 | 1 TB | 32 GB | |
2 TB | 128 GB | ||
3 TB | |||
iMac (21.5-inch) |
Late 2020 | 1 TB | 32 GB |
Apple's Fusion Drive design incorporates proprietary features with limited documentation. It has been reported that the design of Fusion Drive has been influenced by a research project called Hystor.[4] According to the paper,[5] this hybrid storage system unifies a high-speed SSD and a large-capacity hard drive with several design considerations of which one has been used in the Fusion Drive.
Several experimental studies[3][6][7][8][unreliable source?][9][unreliable source?][10][unreliable source?] have been conducted to speculate about the internal mechanism of Fusion Drive. A number of speculations are available but not completely confirmed.
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