Apple's New Fusion Drive Works on Older Macs

[Cave Man]

Originally Posted by lannister80

You know, you could always clone your boot volume to another volume using Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner, boot from that, create the fusion drive out of your old boot disk + the second disk (or partition or whatever), clone the backup back to the fusion drive, and reboot. Easier than reinstalling.

Yeah, I just have my installer on a Flash drive.

[emir]

I have the installer of 10.8 or 10.8.1 on my flash drive. Not sure. I think it has to be 10.8.2 for this to work right?

I am still a bit indecisive on this whether to try it or not. I think i need to see further testing cause i am not a developer nor someone who knows a lot about mac on the terminal level. All i can do with terminal is type "uptime" and follow (copy paste) DIY instructions online.

Also the cost factor and stableness is a huge issue. I'll have 1.1 gigs of space which has some major cost already, and because of the risk factor i'll need a bigger external (1.5 or 2 TB) for time machine purposes almost doubling the cost.

When are the first fusion macs getting delivered. We need to see some comparisons.

Also can you recommend me some sites to buy HDD SSD optibay and stuff that ships internationally?

[Berserker-UK]

Just coming back to reply, so sorry if these have already been addressed...

Originally Posted by ncaissie

But if the Apple drive is simply two drives in one and when one goes you pay more to fix it and all your files are gone.
Using two drives on your own is cheaper and less costly to replace. As you said Time machine is the answer for recovering your files.

As already stated many times, it's two physical drives made to look to the user like one. You can replace one or other of Apple's drives (provided it hasn't been soldered in).

Originally Posted by tbrinkma

Reliability is how often something fails. Robustness is how well something fails. They're similar, but distinct concepts.

For example, a single HDD is actually slightly more reliable than a RAID array made with identical drives, because a single drive is less likely to fail than one of a bunch. The RAID array, on the other hand is more robust because it can recover from that failure.

Except RAID-0, which can't, because it only maintains one copy of the data with no redundancy. If the reports are accurate, Fusion Drive also only maintains one copy, so by your definition, that makes it less robust than either drive alone (and causes more wear on both due to all the data copying).

Not that I'd advise against it. Just make sure you have backups, which you should be doing anyway. And there's a lesson I need to learn myself!

[badsandwich]

Originally Posted by petterihiisila

I'm running it on Early 2008 Mac Pro. It essentially took those 2 commands as described in the article and now there's a drive called Fusion.

Missing parts were to figure out the disk numbers, use "diskutil list" for that. And for formatting the volume, you need the ID behind "Logical Volume" using command "diskutil cs list". Using Intel SSD and Seagate HDD, both internal. SSD is just hanging in there, I don't have a cradle.

So the commands for me were:

diskutil list (to get the disk numbers, in my case 4 and 0, #4 being the SSD)
diskutil cs create Fusion disk4 disk0 (to create a new volume, unformatted)
diskutil cs list (to find the volume ID)
diskutil cs createVolume 6B3D1709-EAF5-4E8C-B51B-3FED5EB17E00 jhfs+ Fusion 1100g (to format it)

Blue text are variables that you need to set for your system. Fusion is the name I gave for the drive.

Be careful with those disk numbers. Get them wrong and you will format the wrong disk. Disconnect your Time Machine before these commands in case things blow up.

Thanks for summarising this petterihiisila. I've added a post on Mac Gamer about it.

[MatthewAMEL]

Originally Posted by emir

How did it turn out for you? Working? Problems?
<snip>
How is this setup performing? Did you see a significant increase with the performance in general. I might try this sooner before getting into the fusion drive hack.

Installation went smoothly. The only 'problem' I had wasn't related to the Fusion Drive, but my Time Machine restore condensing two volumes into one.

Performance 'seems' the same to me. I had my boot/user on the SSD. The HUGE benefit is the one large volume. I have 256GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. I wound up with one 735GB volume.

After I run for another 24 hours and have a couple of confirmed good backups, I am going to run Boot Camp Assistant and put Windows 7 back on.

BTW- Disk Utility had no problems repairing permissions and running 'repair' on the volume. I suspect that it would be unable to do repairs on a Fusion Drive partition table.

[pell]

Originally Posted by petterihiisila

diskutil cs createVolume 6B3D1709-EAF5-4E8C-B51B-3FED5EB17E00 jhfs+ Fusion 100% (to format it)

You can use a percentage of the disk when making a volume (My changes in red). This way you don't need to guess the usable total size.

[paulCC]

Hello - I am quite excited about being able to turn my 2011 15inch Macbook Pro into an SSD/HDD Fusion setup......seems to be the best combination of speed and storage capacity.

One question to the brave people who have already done this - is the Fusion drive visible when you boot from an external drive ?

Reason for this question - I rely on SuperDuper to make bootable backups on external drives ( in addition to Crashplan Pro for off-site backup ). I am guessing the SuperDuper backup will work. But the booting from the external drive, and seeing the Fusion as a single volume, so restore can be done, that worries me a little. Or is it that as long as the bootable drive contains 10.8.2 OS X, that the Fusion volume should be visible ?

Thanks for any info on this. PaulCC.

[ncaissie]

Originally Posted by Berserker-UK

As already stated many times, it's two physical drives made to look to the user like one. You can replace one or other of Apple's drives (provided it hasn't been soldered in).

Ok, I thought I seen a single drive in the keynote. Must have imagined it.

[emir]

i really want to do this an improve (perhaps double) the performance of my 2.5 year old MBP even though it's fine still.(it's a mac, doesn't age quite easy)

However a little research showed it's quite expensive. Optibay + superdrive usb enclosure + 1TB 5400rpm HDD + 128 GB SSD + 2 TB usb external for time machine = a lot of money. (400-500 $) including overseas shipping from United States considering i live in Turkey.


Anyone have any other solutions so i can get this bump wrapped up in about 200-250 $?

[milo]

Originally Posted by pell

You can use a percentage of the disk when making a volume (My changes in red). This way you don't need to guess the usable total size.

Does 100% seem to be safe? At least for non boot drives which don't require a recovery partition?

[rjohn54]

I found this video on YouTube that details the same thing, but in a little better detail. I'd suggest checking it out. It helped me set up a Fusion Drive and I'm flying now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_odnNpv-FQ

[petterihiisila]

Originally Posted by paulCC

Or is it that as long as the bootable drive contains 10.8.2 OS X, that the Fusion volume should be visible ?

I would bet 8:2 that it is visible. That is, disk headers alone will tell OSX that it's part of a special volume.

Reason: That's how it works with Apple software RAID too. Reboot to random, recent enough OSX understands software RAID volumes made of multiple disks without importing or reconfiguring them. And that's older technology.

[Richdmoore]

I don't know if anyone has tried to do an internal hdd with thunderbolt SSD combination with a fusion drive yet, but I would be interested to hear if sleeping or other issues would prevent that from working.

I really, really, really don't want to crack open my 2011 iMac to attempt to install an SSD (and whatever brackets apple leaves out when creating a hdd only imac) but would like the speed increase from picking up a small thunderbolt SSD drive.

I don't know terminal, so I would want to wait for an easier install method as well, once it is proven to be fairly stable, before I purchased a drive and attempted this myself.

[tehpwnerer19]

I can confirm that this will work with more than 2 drives as well. I'm using 2 64 GB Crucial M4s and a 250 GB HDD. Pulling writes around 105 MB/s and reads around 500 MB/s. That YouTube video is worth a look at if you're struggling, or just want to see results without messing around with it .

[MatthewAMEL]

Just an update on my DIY Fusion Drive...

I have an OWC SSD, so I was using TRIM Enabler.

Attempting to re-install TRIM Enabler destroyed my Fusion Disk. It required a complete re-do.

After a ML re-install, but before a complete restore, I thought I would try the script version of TRIM enabler from Grant Pannell.
http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

It's working with no issues.

BootCamp worked with no problems. I have Win7 re-installed (thanks Winclone) on my MBP.

[Cave Man]

Originally Posted by MatthewAMEL

I have an OWC SSD, so I was using TRIM Enabler. Attempting to re-install TRIM Enabler destroyed my Fusion Disk. It required a complete re-do.

I thought OWC's SSDs used the Sandforce controller, thus no need for TRIM enabler??

[MatthewAMEL]

As an aside, has anyone tried 'fsck' on a Fusion Drive?

----------

Originally Posted by Cave Man

I thought OWC's SSDs used the Sandforce controller, thus no need for TRIM enabler??

It's been argued many times before, but TRIM is an OS level function, garbage collection works at the block level.

You need both.

[Richdmoore]

Originally Posted by Cave Man

I thought OWC's SSDs used the Sandforce controller, thus no need for TRIM enabler??

Owc blog, they don't recommend the hack to enable trim.
http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-tr...has-the-answer

Of course, this was prior to the Lion release, so the info may have changed. YMMV I think applies.

[MatthewAMEL]

Originally Posted by Richdmoore

Owc blog, they don't recommend the hack to enable trim.
http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-tr...has-the-answer

Of course, this was prior to the Lion release, so the info may have changed. YMMV I think applies.

...and here we go.

The OWC Blog is wrong.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/48...ed/index1.html

Spend 90 seconds with Google. A SSD with a robust Garbage Collection routine and TRIM support is required for optimal performance and longevity of the SSD.

It's common sense. The SSD hardware has no idea what's been deleted/marked for deletion until the OS tells it so. TRIM is the method the OS uses to communicate with SSDs. How the SSD handles the cleanup requests is a function of the firmware (garbage collection).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

[CWallace]

In the latest Hypercritical podcast (#92), John Siracusa was able to get his hands on a 2012 Mac Mini with the Fusion Drive and diskutil /list returns the following:

/dev/dev0 - 128GB SSD with no file system
/dev/dev1 - 1TB HDD with no file system
/dev/dev2 - 1.1TB volume with Journaled HFS Plus titled "Macintosh HD"

He's also confirmed that like File Vault, Fusion operates on the CoreStorage block-level and that when you create one of these concatenated drives, CoreStorage knows which one is faster and automatically performs these block-level moves in the background to ensure the most-read data is on the fastest drive.

So looks like this has been a feature of OS X perhaps since Lion, but only now is being formally implemented by Apple.

[surroundfan]

Originally Posted by MatthewAMEL

Just an update on my DIY Fusion Drive...

I have an OWC SSD, so I was using TRIM Enabler.

Attempting to re-install TRIM Enabler destroyed my Fusion Disk. It required a complete re-do.

After a ML re-install, but before a complete restore, I thought I would try the script version of TRIM enabler from Grant Pannell.
http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

It's working with no issues.

BootCamp worked with no problems. I have Win7 re-installed (thanks Winclone) on my MBP.

Just made a DIY fusion drive on my mini here too.

Three points I would add:

1. After restoring from a Time Machine backup, I successfully reenabled Trim using Trim enabler 2.2.

2. I successfully preserved my existing Windows 8 partition by only including the existing HFS partition in the fusing process (i.e. 'disk1s2' or whatever the HFS partition is, rather than 'disk1' or whatever the hard drive is)

3. Rather than guessing the capacity of the fused drive (i.e. 1100G or whatever), I used a percentage (i.e. 100%)

[emir]

What's a TRIM enabler. Sorry for not spending 30 seconds on google but i couldn't figure the connection with fusion drive especially when no one mentioned it (as far as i recall) at the last 11 pages.

Things getting even more confusing?


Oh btw, someone with a new fusion drive mac mini should perform this hack on another mac and compare. Tests already! Come on tech sites, youtube channels, people of the world!

[alexdd]

can you delete or reformat the fusion drive you created?

[Cave Man]

Originally Posted by MatthewAMEL

It's been argued many times before, but TRIM is an OS level function, garbage collection works at the block level. You need both.

So I've been running an OWC SSD in my MacBook Air for about a year without the Trim Enabler app. I just installed it, turned it on and rebooted and it seems to be working. However, do I need to do anything else, or is it automated from this point on? Thanks much.

[MatthewAMEL]

Originally Posted by Cave Man

So I've been running an OWC SSD in my MacBook Air for about a year without the Trim Enabler app. I just installed it, turned it on and rebooted and it seems to be working. However, do I need to do anything else, or is it automated from this point on? Thanks much.

That's a great question I don't have the answer to.

I understand the only truly reliable way to return a SSD to a 'like new' state is to use the 'Secure Erase' command.

Secure Erase is NOT the same as writing zeros. Writing zeros to your SSD will just wear it out faster.

I do know that when you run fsck in single-user mode on an SSD, the last command echoed is the 'TRIMming unused blocks'.

There is a post here on Macrumors that discusses methods to Secure Erase your Mac SSD.
Forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=841182