Apple's New Fusion Drive Works on Older Macs

[viktorcode]

Originally Posted by Ned Bulous

Here's my output attached.

I think the problem lies with SSD status: missing. It should say online. When I was making my fusion drive from an old HDD and freshly bought SSD I formatted SSD first just to make sure it works and then enabled trim on it (trim is irrelevant for fusion though).

[Ned Bulous]

Originally Posted by viktorcode

I think the problem lies with SSD status: missing. It should say online. When I was making my fusion drive from an old HDD and freshly bought SSD I formatted SSD first just to make sure it works and then enabled trim on it (trim is irrelevant for fusion though).

It's a brand new ssd, but I did format it first. Oh well, I'm going to give up. If its this flaky to cause boot issues and system hang on the USB flash installer, I just don't trust it anymore. What a pain. . .

[milo]

Originally Posted by hfg

Unfortunately...

Yeah, I know this is how FD works. I was asking if CoreStorage includes any other options that would do something similar but with the SSD mirroring/caching data instead.

[Cave Man]

Originally Posted by viktorcode

(trim is irrelevant for fusion though).

Can you elaborate on this?

[viktorcode]

Trim is an interface between the OS and SSD that helps SSD to extend its longevity and as a result to keep its performance top notch over the time. Think of it as a very specific disk cache which is managed not by disk itself, but by OS X (or Windows, Linux, whatever…) By default trim is enabled only on Apple provided SSD drives. To enable trim on a 3rd party SSD you can use TrimEnabler (http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322). SSD itself must support trim, of course, but every modern drive do. You can check trim status of an SSD drive in System Report list, Serial-ATA section.

Fusion drive, which is based on CoreStorage, is completely independent of underlying technology and can work with or without trim on SSD underneath.

[mogens]

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11...-fusion-drive/

According to this the ssd shipped in mac mini is a samsung 830 with somekind of updated firmware....wonder if the updated firmware version is needed to get a fully functional fusion drive?

[Ned Bulous]

But now both my corestorage physical volumes show "missing" and the "diskutil cs delete (UUID)" just hangs. Any ideas how to proceed?

[hfg]

If you look at the diskutil command-set, there are 'undo' commands for each of the ones you used to make the "Fusion" drive. You might try to un-join them and revert each drive back to its native state, then fresh-format each drive for OS X (or maybe even format for a windows format and then back to OS X) ... and then attempt the "Fusion" procedure again. ???

What a mess ... good luck!

[alexdd]

Originally Posted by Ned Bulous

But now both my corestorage physical volumes show "missing" and the "diskutil cs delete (UUID)" just hangs. Any ideas how to proceed?

It seems that you deleted the previous VGroup and you created new with missing disks.If it was my Mac the "diskutil cs delete(UUID)" would do the fix and after a reboot the disks would be recognised by Disk Utility.
Use of delete :Usage: diskutil coreStorage delete lvgUUID
Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group. All logical volumes will be removed.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.

[viktorcode]

Originally Posted by mogens

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11...-fusion-drive/

According to this the ssd shipped in mac mini is a samsung 830 with somekind of updated firmware....wonder if the updated firmware version is needed to get a fully functional fusion drive?

I created my fusion drive with off the shelf SSD. Corsair Force GS 240, to be precise.

[badsandwich]

Has anyone been able to do this whilst still keeping their 10.8 recovery partition?

And was anyone able to restore from Time Machine rather than do a re-install?

[Boiling Ice]

Originally Posted by badsandwich

Has anyone been able to do this whilst still keeping their 10.8 recovery partition?

And was anyone able to restore from Time Machine rather than do a re-install?

I downloaded 10.8.2 installation file again and created a USB out of it and started the process of creating FD, you won't be able to keep the old recovery partition as you need to destroy all partitions on all drives before proceeding with creating FD

Restoring from TM was really tricky but worked perfectly in my situation. I have MBP (early 2011), replaced my DVD with SSD last year. I had OS+Apps on SSD, Users home folders on HD. And this is how I got everything back to normal as expected, note that before creating FD, I had SSD named "Macintosh SSD" and HD as "Macintosh HD"

1) booted with 10.8.2 USB, deleted all partitions on all drives and created FD and named as "Macintosh HD"
2) Installed 10.8.2, connected my TM and proceeded with restoring, it only showed data from my SSD but not HD. So TM restored my apps and based usernames information (like logins, passwords).
3) Since I had 'root' account enabled my default, I logged in as root, under system preferences -> accounts & groups, I made sure that all users home folder path points to '/Users/xxx'
4) Having my TM connected, via finder I went under /Users and selected my username home folder, I entered TM and restored that user folder from latest backup.
5) That's it, all apps, data, preferences are back exactly as expected with FD

[badsandwich]

Yeah that's pretty much my setup too. Do you have a new recovery partition now or is it gone for good?

[Boiling Ice]

Originally Posted by badsandwich

Yeah that's pretty much my setup too. Do you have a new recovery partition now or is it gone for good?

diskutil doesn't show I have one, booting up with 'alt' pressed shows 2 drives and both have the same name "Macintosh HD", I will try to boot with "CMD+R" later but I'm currently running my first backup after this FD setup

I'll update you later

[viktorcode]

As I understood when installing on a fusion drive the recovery partition won't be automatically created. However, after reading this thread it looks to me it is still possible to add it manually after the installation.

[Boiling Ice]

Originally Posted by viktorcode

As I understood when installing on a fusion drive the recovery partition won't be automatically created. However, after reading this thread it looks to me it is still possible to add it manually after the installation.

I can confirm that recovery partition DOES exist. I was able to go into recovery mode by pressing CMD+R while booting.

[badsandwich]

Originally Posted by Boiling Ice

I can confirm that recovery partition DOES exist. I was able to go into recovery mode by pressing CMD+R while booting.

Did you allocate 100% when creating the volume or did you leave some GB free?

[Boiling Ice]

Originally Posted by badsandwich

Did you allocate 100% when creating the volume or did you leave some GB free?

I left 10GB cause I assumed the OS will need such space to create the Recovery partition.

I followed this guide to do the full process, it's perfect:
http://www.petralli.net/2012/10/anal...nal-hard-disk/

[badsandwich]

Originally Posted by Boiling Ice

I left 10GB cause I assumed the OS will need such space to create the Recovery partition

Hmm. Yeah it didn't occur to me at the time to do that. I'm trying the Recovery Image Creator to see if that does it (or if it nukes the drive completely :/)

[mogens]

Can I restore to a fusiondrive from my superduper backup?
1:create the fusiondrive
2: boot from external FW hard drive backup and run superduper.
3: boot from fusion disk and the fusion disk will do it's magic...

I have a late 2009 i7 with a ssd in the optical bay.
I'll hate to do a fresh install, as I just did that with Mountain Lion and now everything is running smooth.

thx

[badsandwich]

Originally Posted by mogens

Can I restore to a fusiondrive from my superduper backup?
1:create the fusiondrive
2: boot from external FW hard drive backup and run superduper.
3: boot from fusion disk and the fusion disk will do it's magic...

I have a late 2009 i7 with a ssd in the optical bay.
I'll hate to do a fresh install, as I just did that with Mountain Lion and now everything is running smooth.

thx

Possibly not.

[Boiling Ice]

Originally Posted by mogens

Can I restore to a fusiondrive from my superduper backup?
1:create the fusiondrive
2: boot from external FW hard drive backup and run superduper.
3: boot from fusion disk and the fusion disk will do it's magic...

I have a late 2009 i7 with a ssd in the optical bay.
I'll hate to do a fresh install, as I just did that with Mountain Lion and now everything is running smooth.

thx

if you have Time Machine, then you can just create FUD, install ML, then restore TM... it will be exactly as it was before

----------

Originally Posted by badsandwich

Hmm. Yeah it didn't occur to me at the time to do that. I'm trying the Recovery Image Creator to see if that does it (or if it nukes the drive completely :/)

To save time, I would backup with TM, recreate FUD -leaving 10GB for Recovery-, install ML and then restore

[Cave Man]

Originally Posted by mogens

Can I restore to a fusiondrive from my superduper backup?

Don't know, but you can with Carbon Copy Cloner.

[Boiling Ice]

Originally Posted by Cave Man

Don't know, but you can with Carbon Copy Cloner.

I tried to restore my home folder with CCC, it restored but gave me permissions issues, so make sure CCC is configured correctly before you do that

[hfg]

As I mentioned previously, I did not destroy all the partitions on my drives prior to setting them up as a "Fusion" drive. I wanted to maintain my Windows Boot partition on the SSD if possible, so I joined the "partition-ID" on the SSD and the "disk-id" on the hard disk and it worked.

It appears that the Apple Boot Recovery HD partition was also saved by doing this.
I used the "100%" entry for the fusion disk size.

Here is my disk list:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
  0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
  1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
  2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         158.8 GB   disk0s2
  3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             785.0 MB   disk0s3
  4:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows SSD             80.2 GB    disk0s4

/dev/disk1
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
  0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
  1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
  2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         499.8 GB   disk1s2
  3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3

/dev/disk2
  #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
  0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh Fusion       *655.5 GB   disk2

I also did a Time Machine backup prior to the disk join, and used it to restore the "Fusion" drive with no problems.


-howard