MacMini — Dual Internal Separate Drives are Superior to the 'Fusion' Option
The Apple 'Fusion' option for the MacMini isn’t just a poor value— it is a serious downgrade in many ways— versus the SSD + HDD alternatives.
Read Dual Drives are Better than 'Fusion'.
| Apple Fusion | Separate SSD + HDD | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | + $250 | 240GB OWC Extreme Pro 6G SSD + OWC Data Doubler + toolkit = about $330 480GB OWC Extreme Pro 6G SSD + OWC Data Doubler + toolkit = about $629 |
| Options | NONE | 120GB or 480GB or 960GB options |
| Guaranteed speed for critical tasks | NO | YES |
| Capacity of SSD | 128GB (but maybe only 120GB usable, as per past Apple SSD options) |
240GB (or 120GB or 480GB or 960GB or any combination of SSD and HDD of any capacity) |
| Separate Boot drive | NO | YES |
| Internal clone | NO | YES (on HDD) |
| Internal Time Machine | NO | YES (on HDD) |
| Upgradeable SSD | NO | YES, just backup and clone/swap |
| Upgradeable HDD | NO (at least not easily) |
YES, just backup and clone/swap |
| Works with disk repair tools | Maybe, maybe not (according to Apple) | YES |
| Reliability | Failure of SSD or HDD means TOTAL FAILURE | Failure of one drive fails only that drive, the other remains intact |
| Serviceable by user? | Considerable “nerd” skill required to deal with Fusion volume setup (if failure) | Simple conventional single drive initialize/format |
| Can be partitioned? | One partition only, Fusion benefits are lost on the 2nd partition | YES, either or both drives |
| Special Disk Utility needed? | YES (“earlier versions cannot be used”) | NO |
| Extra disk activity and thus increased noise and power consumption? | YES— when files are moved around in the background | NO |
