Weâve been waiting and waiting for Apple to release the next version of OS X Mountain Lion in hopes that the next full version would have all the necessary components to setup a Fusion drive on any Mac capable of installing a hard drive and SSD together. A little over a week ago, Apple released OS X version 10.8.3 and, with one small caveat, our hopes were fulfilled.
Fusion Hard Drive MacThe Profusion Of Fusion Confusion
Nov 15, 2019 This is how to Fix A Split Fusion Drive on any iMac that comes pre-installed with High Sierra or MacOS Mojave.Terminal Codes for MacOS High Sierra: diskutil list. May 01, 2015 Where the '#' designates a number assigned to the drive by OS X. Locate the mount points for the SSD and HDD you wish to use to create the Fusion Drive. They'll be needed in. Apr 08, 2020 Fusion Drives that have been partitioned can be resized only with the version of Disk Utility that was initially used to create the Fusion Drive or newer. If your Fusion Drive was created with OS X Yosemite, for example, you can resize the drive with Yosemite. It also depends on which version of the OS you're using to make the fusion drive AND the age of the Mac you're running. I don't know exactly if it is only in Mavericks of if Mountain Lion already supported this in the latest updates, but after creating a Fusion Drive the second hard drive. Boot into OS X (if you would like to use your new fusion drive as the boot drive then you will need to boot using an OS X USB Recovery Partition, if you need to create one follow this guide). Once you are booted into either OS X or your OS X USB, open Terminal. You can find it at the following path: ApplicationsUtilitiesTerminal.app.
This is the normal type of volume that you would install OS X on or use to format an external drive. Fusion Drive quirks If you split up a Fusion Drive you got from Apple, you won't be able to use.
But before we get to showing you exactly how to setup your own DIY Fusion drive, Iâd like to dispel some mis-information that has been floating around the web. Up until now, most of the reports youâve read about creating your own DIY Fusion drive on a machine have been incomplete. There have been many tutorials on how to create a Core Storage volume that have been labeled as âhow to create a Fusion driveâ. They are two similar, yet different drive configurations. Iâve addressed a lot of this information in comments on the OWC Blog, but figure it would be a good idea to review and further explain what a Fusion drive actually is as opposed to a Core Storage volume.
When Apple introduced Lion, they added a logical volume manager (Core Storage) to the OS. The key factor to Core Storage is that it allows a single volume to span multiple physical disks. Which makes the Fusion drive possible, but it isnât the only aspect.
What turns a Core Storage drive into a Fusion drive is the introduction of automated storage tiering to mix. This has actually been around since 2005 on larger scale networks where the software moves data across different disk types and RAID levels in order to balance space, cost and performance requirements of a server. Prior to the automation software, this type of data manipulation was done manually.
Zip Drive Mac Os 7
Most of the terminal command setups weâve seen online are only initiating that Core Storage volume. It needs the software to run the automated storage tiering to make it a true Fusion Drive. Until now, weâve only seen that software component in the 2012 Mac mini and 2012 iMac models that ship with their specific builds of 10.8.2
You donât find out that itâs not truly âFusionâ until the SSD portion has been completely filled up. And even then â whatâs on the SSD continues to be read at full SSD speed, so itâs only the new data writes (where existing data on SSD is not being replaced) and subsequent reads of that HDD stored data that are slower due to being on the HDD. The way a Core Storage volume works, it really makes people think theyâve created a true Fusion drive. So, now that you know the difference, the question on everyoneâs mind isâ¦
How Do I Create A True DIY Fusion Drive?Items Needed:
Step 1 â Have a copy of your computerâs data. Canon pixma drivers download free.
This process will erase both the installed SSD and hard drive, so if you have data on one or both of these drives, youâll want to have a copy thatâs not on either of the two drives that are going to be part of the Fusion array. If you are installing both a new SSD and a new platter-based drive into, you can put your original drive in an external enclosure, and your data will be there, out of the way. If youâre using the same drive that you already have installed, you will need to copy that driveâs contents to an external one.
Step 2 â Download 10.8.3 from the App Store.
And hereâs the caveat I mentioned earlier: At this time, you absolutely need to download OS X 10.8.3 from the Mac App Store. To further clarify, weâre talking about the FULL VERSION â not the update. This is the only way to assure you have the correct version of Disk Utility on your recovery partition. You can do this by going to App Store > Purchases > Click the Download button to the right of OS X Mountain Lion. ***you may need to actually purchase ML if it does not show in the Purchases screen.
Step 3 â Move the Installer to your Desktop.
The Mountain Lion install package will show up in the Applications folder once downloaded. Move it to your desktop.
Step 4 â Right click on the package icon and select Show Package Contents.
Step 5 â Navigate to Contents > Shared Support.
There you will see InstallESD.dmg. Drag this image file to your desktop.
Step 6 â Using Disk Utility, restore the InstallESD.dmg file to an External Hard Drive or USB Flash Drive at least 8GB in capacity.
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This should be a separate drive other than your clone or Time Machine backup.
Step 7 â Install the new drive(s) in the computer youâre upgrading.
See our video page for our step-by-step instructions on installing one or both drives into your machine.
Step 8 â Boot to the newly created 10.8.3 Installer.
Boot the machine while holding down the Option key at startup and selecting the external hard drive or USB flash drive with the 10.8.3 installer (itâll have the orange icon).
Step 9 â Open Terminal.
If you installed at least one brand new drive, you will likely get a message about a disk being unreadable. Thatâs okay; just click âIgnore.â Weâll be initializing it over the next couple of steps.
You can then open Terminal. You can find it in Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Step 10 â Find Your Disk IDs.
In Terminal, type:
This will have the command-line version of Disk Utility (diskutil) that lists all the disks attached to your computer. In the results, you will find the disk IDs of the HDD and SSD. Take note of these ID numbers. In most cases (2 drives internally and booted from the external), the IDs will be âdisk0â and âdisk1.â However, individual results may vary, depending on your setup, so youâll want to make sure you have the right drives.
Step 11 â Create the Fusion drive array.
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In Terminal, type:
This is the command that actually tells your Mac to tie the drives together in a Fusion array.
Broken down, the step does this:
Once you enter in this command, itâll do its thing and set-up the drives into an array for Fusion.
Step 12 â Get ID information for Fusion array.
In Terminal, type:
This will give you a listing showing any Core Storage Logical Volume Groups (aka Fusion drive). You will need to do two things here. First, copy the long alphanumeric string for the Logical Volume Group, then note the Free Space for it. You will need both of these for the next step.
Step 13 â Format the Fusion drive so you can put files on it.
In Terminal, type:
This command creates a volume on the Fusion array where you can place your files. Again, since some important stuff is going on here, letâs break down the command.
Once you have this information entered, hit Return and let it do its thing; the Fusion Drive will then be available in the Finder.
Step 14 â Close Terminal and Install OS X.
Now that we have created the CoreStorage volume named Fusion, we can now install the OS and bring over your data.
Close your Terminal window and select the option to Install OS X. Follow the prompts for installation, choosing your new Fusion drive as the destination. You will need an Internet connection to do this; an Ethernet connection is preferable, though you will also be able to use an AirPort connection, albeit at slower speeds.
Step 15 â Migrate over your information.
As part of the setup for your new installation, you will be asked if you wish to import data from another disk; you will want to. Attach and select your clone or Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant will bring over your data.
Step 16 â Enjoy your new installation.
Once migration has completed, shut down your computer and disconnect your clone. At this point, you will have OS X running on a Fusion drive on your computer. You can now use it like you would any other drive.
Things to consider before committing to a Fusion setup
As with any drive setup, there are pros and cons to a Fusion array. The pros, as mentioned at the beginning of the article are that it appears single volume and works automatically to keep the best speed. However, there are a couple of cons that you should also be aware of.
You will need a backup.
While a backup plan for your computer is something you should have anyway, this becomes even more important for Fusion drive equipped Macs. The way Fusion is set up, if either the hard drive or the SSD fails, the data on both drives is lost. Having a reliable, frequent backup plan will be essential in protecting against data loss.
Performance may not be enough for high-end professional use.
Apple claims near-SSD performance for Fusion-equipped drives. For casual use (email, Web browsing, basic iPhoto use, etc.), this is largely true. From testing both in-house and by Lloyd Chambers of Mac Performance Guide, a Fusion drive will first fill the faster SSD portion, then start filling the slower hard drive. Once writing is complete, data will be moved from the SSD to the hard drive until there is 4GB free on the SSD again.
The trouble comes when you start working with larger files, such as with pro audio, video and large-scale photo work. Often, these files far surpass the 4GB size, so you will see fast SSD transfer speeds followed by a precipitous drop in speed when it transfers over to the hard drive. For a full rundown of testing, check out Lloydâs writeup at Mac Performance Guide.
For those that a Fusion drive just isnât going to be practical, you may be better served using a Hard Drive/SSD 2-drive setup with a relocated home folder. You reduce the risk of losing all your data at once, while still retaining a large portion of the speed/storage benefits of Fusion, but with more flexibility.
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The new Mac Minis have super fast SSD Drives. I measured read times of 2500MB/s which is 5 times faster than the SSD drive in my old mac mini. But these drives are super super expensive. (An extra US$1400 for a 2TB drive). So I thought it might be an option to buy a Mac Mini with a small internal drive (256GB) and add an external SSD drive and combine them into a fusion drive. It didnât work! But I thought I âd write a post in case anyone else has the same idea.
Disk Speeds
Here are the read speeds of various drive configurations measured with Black Magic disk test:
Old Mac Mini (2012):
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Internal SSD drive: 480Mb/s:
New Mac Mini T2 2018:
Internal SSD: 2500Mb/s
External (USB-C) SSD: 530Mb/s
The new Mac Minis are much faster, but I was interested in the speed difference between the internal SSD and external SSD. It is so significant that this would be an ideal situation to make a fusion drive. A fusion drive was designed by Apple to âfuseâ an SSD drive to a slower spinning drive to âspeed it up.â The writes are done to the SSD, and the most used files are kept on the SSD. Then files are copied between the SSD and the slower drive in the background. So imagine being able to make an Fusion drive with a fast and a slow SSD.
Making a Fusion Drive.
Hereâs how I made a fusion Drive:
Firstly I had to boot from the internet recovery partition. (Reboot and hold down Apple-R).
I plugged in my Samsung T5 drive and combined with the internal SSD drive of the Mac Mini to form a new Fusion Drive. The Fusion Drive is blank so you then need to reinstall OS X onto it. The instructions are here:
https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT207584
and here:
Mac Os X Remove Fusion Driver
In summary, firstly you need to run this command below to find out the names of your drives:
diskutil list
Then you combine both drives into one substituting the numbers that you found above :
diskutil coreStorage create FUSION /dev/disk1 /dev/disk2
Then you need to create the drive volume:
diskutil cs createVolume logicalvolumegroup jhfs+ Macintosh HD 100%
After that you just format the drive as APFS, and install OSX. This gives the Fusion Drive a recovery partition and everything ready to go.
What worked, and what didnât.
Well the drive seemed to work. The Internal Mac Mini SSD drive speed was 2500MB/s. The Samsung T5 SSD was 530MB/s. My newly created fusion drive was 2700!
This is the original internal SSD from the new Mac Mini:
Not only is the Fusion drive as fast as the Internal SSD (which is what I would expect), itâs actually FASTER!!! The fusion drive must be reading and writing from BOTH drives simultaneously. They had plenty of free space so this makes sense.
So what didnât work? Well the computer was completely unstable. Random restarts. Crashing halfway through installing OS X. Disk Utility crashing. There was some crazy deep level conflict that meant the Mac just wouldnât run properly! I rang Apple support and they talked me through splitting and re-makign the fusion drive but it was still unstable.
So in the end I had to split my fusion drive back into two separate drives.
If you use the Mojave command âdiskutil resetFusionâ to try to fuse 2 SSD drives it says that you can only create a Fusion drove from an SSD and a HDD.
Conclusion
With PCIe hard drives been so expensive it makes complete sense for Apple to allow Fusion drives made with a PCIe SSD combined with slower cheaper SSD. Iâm not sure why this didnât work. IF you try to make a fusion drive in Mojave with the Apple say they only support fusion of an SSD with a Hard disk drive.
Iâd love to hear if anyone else has had success with this. Leave message below if you do!
UPDATE 13th Jan 2018: Yesterday I tried making a fusion drive from the internal Mac Mini drive and an external Seagate FAST SSD drive. It worked flawlessly installing Mac OSX up until the point where I rebooted, then it went into an endless repeating grey screen loop and never got to the desktop!
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