What is Apple’s new Fusion Drive, exactly?

MacBook /

No, the Fusion Drive is not some spaceship accessory from your favorite sci-fi movie. The feature, which arrives in a number of devices Apple announced during its October 23 media event, is actually just a cutting-edge piece of hard drive technology.

The Fusion Drive bridges the fast performance of flash memory with the affordability and storage capacity of traditional hard drives. It combines 128GB of flash capacity with a 1TB or 3TB hard disk drive, in a hybridized drive that Computerworld said “puts Apple ahead of the competition.”

The solid state flash drive will be used for running OS X and applications, while the traditional drive will store documents and media. AnandTech’s Anand Shimpi told the Washington Post this is a smart solution for tapping into the power of flash storage at an affordable price, since high capacity flash storage drives are still prohibitively expensive. The technology will be available on the new iMac, as well as certain Mac mini models.

If you’re enjoying your current Mac mini or MacBook but want to tap into storage that rivals the new Fusion Drive, you may want to consider iResQ’s desktop upgrade services. We can modernize your hard drive by adding more capacity or even by installing a solid state drive, and we also offer MacBook repair services, which can fix other problems.

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