OMG, but telling anyone you just have to use built in tools is quite different than telling him you have to do it through terminal... most OS x users even dont know that there is some terminal... and last thing, no one has tested what happens with os x upgrade, take trim enabler, after each upgrade, kext files are rewritten and trim is disabled, in case of fussion, if something like this happen, you loose your system disk.. I dont say this is a must scenario, but did anyone test external fussion against this risk? I doubt it...
BtW, I am last man telling everyone paying apples bloody tax for fussion.
Well, not to burst your bubble but terminal does in fact come built-in with OS X. But fair enough, I agree the most users might not feel comfortable with using it. Heck, I'm not that high on using it either.. but following the 6 or so very simple steps in order to fuse two drives together into a "Fusion Drive" is simple enough. Perhaps not for grandma and grandpa, but well enough for those who can copy-paste. An OS X upgrade shouldn't affect anything at all since the diskutil is something built-into UNIX and so an OS X upgrade shouldn't affect it - unless OS X removes UNIX-support but I highly doubt that since it's built on UNIX. Regarding trim though, I'm not sure.
Very bad advice. Very, very bad advice. Creating a Fusion drive from an internal and external hard drive is just asking for Trouble with a capital T. If the external drive is ever unplugged, your computer is suddenly confronted with half a disk drive, and total corruption is most likely.
I don't know about you, but I'm not planning on bringing my iMac along with me anywhere so I won't unplug it. And also, if you disconnect a drive from a fused drive(consisting of two drives), it will still be able to access the still connected drive. Nothing will be "corrupted", you will simply be unable to access the disconnected drive. Since the disconnected drive would be the SSD - and thus contain the OS X installation - you will most likely be unable to even log into the system. When you boot, it would be a flashing question mark, indicating that it can't find an OS X installation. At that point you would just connect your SSD once again and reboot.
It's always good to introduce alternatives but in this case there could be some serious caveats as noted above. Also, the Fusion drive is tested and approved by Apple. "Hacking" OSX to create "Fusionstein" is something some people may not want. I also think it's a bit unfair to call it misleading to suggest buying the Fusion drive. It's not a waste of money when you get a fully functional Fusion drive backed by Apple.
It's not hacking, I think you people have some very odd definition of what hacking means. But again, fair enough that some people might not want to try this on their own because they lack the suffecient technical skills. That doesn't mean that it's "misleading" to suggest it to them. If everyone just says "Get Fusion" and don't inform them of this option, then even the technical suffecient people who would be able to actually perform this "upgrade" on their own, would miss out on it and pay unnecessary money to Apple. And that, my friend, IS a waste of money - thus misleading. Giving the option to everyone is most fair for everyone and the least misleading, then they can decide if they feel comfortable with performing this themselves or if they want to pay up and get Apple's Fusion Drive.