Should I Fuse (Fusion) my SSD and HDD or not?

[inscrewtable]

Adding a 512GB SSD to my 2011 iMac.

Has anyone any thoughts on whether it would be a good idea to 'Fuse' them together, or leave them as two separate drives.

what are the pros and cons involved. For me it would be easier to be able to keep a bootable clone. But I note that apple only has 128GB drives in their bto fusion options on the 2012 imac.

Any thoughts appreciated

[flatfoot]

How much space would system & apps take up on the 512GB SSD if you don't fuse? If there is a lot of spare space, I'd rather fuse them in order to make use of that space.

Another idea: Is it possible to partition the SSD into one boot partition and one for use as a fusion drive in conjunction with an HDD?
This would make it easier to make a bootable clone and you'd have maximum speed for your system and apps.

[xgman]

the 512 is large enough to leave them separate and manage it yourself. I think you will have better performance that way.

[inscrewtable]

After viewing this OWC video I decided to keep the drives separate and I am glad I did. This makes it nice and simple.

http://youtu.be/Ou-heXnkPP4

[TypeMRT]

Nice find! Originally I wanted a 500GB SSD + 1.5TB HD but using this method I can get by with just a 250GB SSD (saving $200) and the user accounts on the HD. If it's not fast enough I may move the user accounts to the SSD and keep the iTunes & iPhoto libraries on the HD.

[inscrewtable]

Originally Posted by TypeMRT

Nice find! Originally I wanted a 500GB SSD + 1.5TB HD but using this method I can get by with just a 250GB SSD (saving $200) and the user accounts on the HD. If it's not fast enough I may move the user accounts to the SSD and keep the iTunes & iPhoto libraries on the HD.

I'm currently just finishing up SuperDuper cloning my internal HDD, I've been preparing myself for a month to do the fusion drive thing, and I'm so friggen glad I chanced upon this video. I didn't want to merge the recovery partition till I have the internal hdd backed up.

Everything just went super smooth, I brought all my apps over and nothing needed to be re registered even apps that have complex web activation.

The only moment of apprehension was when bringing over all the apps and other stuff, it looked like nothing was happening and it would take 6 hours but in the end it took 90 minutes for 200GB over to the SSD.

I've got 60GB of world scenery in my x-plane app so I wanted that on the SSD and I dragged my managed aperture library over to a folder I created on the SSD too.

I cannot recommend this too highly, Fusion would be a complete waste of time for me. It would have filled up the SSD with stuff I don't want on it.

I created a boot usb disk and did a fresh OS install. This method is completely seamless. Brilliant.

[turtlez]

i'd fuse them because then you don't have to worry about it. I know i can't stand always having to manually route everything to different drives like itunes library to my storage instead of the OS drive and other stuff similar. As soon as my iMac comes my manual computing labor days will be a lot more automated and I will be able to get more of what I need to do, completed.

[inscrewtable]

Originally Posted by turtlez

i'd fuse them because then you don't have to worry about it. I know i can't stand always having to manually route everything to different drives like itunes library to my storage instead of the OS drive and other stuff similar. As soon as my iMac comes my manual computing labor days will be a lot more automated and I will be able to get more of what I need to do, completed.

I thought the same especially as I wanted to just keep a single bootable clone. However after discovering the technique I link to in post #4 you don't have to worry about where you store your stuff. It's like having a single drive. You just make a your home folder on the SSD then copy it to the HDD then your reference it as per the video and delete the account on the SSD and presto.

The advantage is that you can put what you need only on the SSD otherwise the OS will fill the SSD up with stuff that is wasting it and you only then have a 4GB landing zone. Plus it would be moving stuff around all the time and if one drive goes down it all goes down. Worth considering.

[Fishrrman]

"For me it would be easier to be able to keep a bootable clone."

If you don't mind having two (or more) drive icons on your desktop, and you don't mind "managing" your file placement so that you know where things are on each drive, I see no real benefits to "fusion".

Fusion is Apple's version of "RAID for dummies". As such, it offers the benefit of high speed balanced against the problems when one of the drives fails.

I would much prefer that if any drive I have online fails, that it NOT affect the other drives in the stable.

Suggestion:
If you have BOTH an SSD AND an HDD running all the time, you might consider creating an "alternative boot partition" on your HDD. It doesn't have to be large, 40gb should be fine (or it could even be smaller). Then do a backup clone to it of your system, user account, main apps, utility apps, etc.

The purpose is to ALWAYS have an "immediately-available" fully-bootable clone of your system, etc.

It will mean one more icon on the desktop (3 of them now), but one gets used to that easily. I keep no less than -8- drive icons mounted on my desktop at all times.

[inscrewtable]

Originally Posted by Fishrrman

It will mean one more icon on the desktop (3 of them now), but one gets used to that easily. I keep no less than -8- drive icons mounted on my desktop at all times.

You don't really need to have any icons on your desktop, I prefer to have them all turned off in the Finder prefs because when you open any finder window they are available on the side bar.