I've been vacillating back and forth between building a hackintosh or getting a 27" iMac for a new machine at home. Between my wife and I, over the years, we've had 8 or 9 various iMacs, macbooks and macbook pros, and I buy MBPs for all of my employees, so it's not like I've got an anti-mac bias.
I'm sorely disappointed with our storage options on the new iMacs. The lack of SSD-spinning storage combination options is deplorable, and the current choices with Fusion seem almost designed to discourage use of Bootcamp/Windows. For power users, the current selection isn't good.
I'd like to run Windows from an SSD via bootcamp, and have control over what is stored where in OSX, so I'm thinking of the following solution (onto a 27" BTO):
1) Order my iMac with the single 3TB spinning disk
2) Order the 480Gb SSD from OWC
3) Install the SSD (means opening the iMac of course).
4) Clone OSX onto the SSD. (I may need to do this before installing via an external interface - will figure that out).
5) Format the 3TB drive and move the home directory onto it. Will not run a Fusion drive. Apps and system will reside on the SSD, data on the spinning disk.
6) Use bootcamp to install Windows onto the SSD. I will use about 150GB for the Windows partition. Windows system and data will reside entirely on this partition.
7) Will time machine backup by external USB3 drive that is partitioned to handle the backup from the SSD and the 3TB.
Questions I have are:
-should I clone the 3TB drive onto the SSD before or after I plug it into the motherboard?
-Anything I have to do make the system recognize the SSD as the boot drive instead of the 3TB, or this be automatic since I've reformatted the 3TB to not be the the system drive.
-will I have to de-partition the 3TB drive using disk utility before formatting to fully erase it for use as a data drive?
-the cloning should copy the hidden partitions onto the SSD, correct? I've cloned spinners onto SSDs that replaced them as system drives in my MBPs previously, so it should be fine.
I think that covers it.
Any thoughts on this idea?
Thanks!
I'm sorely disappointed with our storage options on the new iMacs. The lack of SSD-spinning storage combination options is deplorable, and the current choices with Fusion seem almost designed to discourage use of Bootcamp/Windows. For power users, the current selection isn't good.
I'd like to run Windows from an SSD via bootcamp, and have control over what is stored where in OSX, so I'm thinking of the following solution (onto a 27" BTO):
1) Order my iMac with the single 3TB spinning disk
2) Order the 480Gb SSD from OWC
3) Install the SSD (means opening the iMac of course).
4) Clone OSX onto the SSD. (I may need to do this before installing via an external interface - will figure that out).
5) Format the 3TB drive and move the home directory onto it. Will not run a Fusion drive. Apps and system will reside on the SSD, data on the spinning disk.
6) Use bootcamp to install Windows onto the SSD. I will use about 150GB for the Windows partition. Windows system and data will reside entirely on this partition.
7) Will time machine backup by external USB3 drive that is partitioned to handle the backup from the SSD and the 3TB.
Questions I have are:
-should I clone the 3TB drive onto the SSD before or after I plug it into the motherboard?
-Anything I have to do make the system recognize the SSD as the boot drive instead of the 3TB, or this be automatic since I've reformatted the 3TB to not be the the system drive.
-will I have to de-partition the 3TB drive using disk utility before formatting to fully erase it for use as a data drive?
-the cloning should copy the hidden partitions onto the SSD, correct? I've cloned spinners onto SSDs that replaced them as system drives in my MBPs previously, so it should be fine.
I think that covers it.
Any thoughts on this idea?
Thanks!
