Resolved To Fusion or Not? That is the question.

[roadkill401]

I finally got around to ripping my 2012 mac mini i5 apart and install the second drive kit to add a 240gb SSD drive. It's a pretty fast drive with 530read/480write. Running the whole OS over the SSD is blazingly fast and a clear winner if it was not for currently as it's a family computer, there is about 200gb of data stored on the mac. This gives a limiting factor for who gets something fast and who gets the slow built in hard drive. Also you are then stuck having to move the data back and forth between the two drives depending on speed needs.

When I got my work iMac it came initially with a 1tb Fusion drive and it was simply fast. That was only a 120gb SSD fused with a 1tb hard drive. Now admittedly the SSD and HD were faster spec'd than what is now inside this Mac Mini, but the SSD inside is also larger (240gb).

From what I remember, it will use the SSD both as a cache for reading blocks, along with put the most needed files into SSD so they are faster, and the not needed files get moved onto the HD partition. This effectively would give me a single 720gb drive that appears to be really fast, rather than two single drives which one is blazing fast and the other is dead slow.

I am giving in to making a carbon copy of the current install for archive backup purposes. Wipe the two current drives and start from a clean slate, migrating all the data required back onto the new setup and re-installing all the apps from new. I know that my current Mac Mini might have some OS files that are not optimum and is doing some funny things that starting from a wiped install is likely a good idea.

What are your thoughts and most importantly WHY?

 

[grahamperrin]

Case For Unfusing the Fusion Drive – three posts from me

 

[hugodrax]

I have been using it for 4+ years now with no issues.

 

[Weaselboy]

What are your thoughts and most importantly WHY?

I would go with the Fusion setup just because it is so much easier than fussing about figuring out what you want on which drive.

 

[MH01]

For me it's a balance between speed and space. In my Mac mini I run two ssd for max performance , in my 2009 iMac I use a 256gb ssd / 3TB Hdd as a fusion drive, it works great.

You are in a great position cause you can setup a fusion drive with the ssd size of your choice . The current fusion drives are down to 20 something odd GB of ssd? Old ones were 128? You can make a 256 or 512 ssd fusion drive for your most common used files, so in reality, for majority of day to day tasks you would be using ssd.

I'd be interested to see the performance of new fusion drives, form me looks like a big step backwards in performance of you use a lot of files

 

[roadkill401]

I ended up just letting the mac mini configure itself at a fusion drive. After a bit of a fight to get the accounts moved over from a backup onto the new install. (it was mostly about iphotos to photos conversion). I reloaded the apps from clean and they work great. My daughter is ecstatic as her SIMMs now loads in seconds versus minutes on the old drive. We can switch between users and everyone can realistically stay logged in and just switch between user profiles as each person needs to do their thing. Well, not my daughter as she has time limits setup for her use, so she logs off each time so not to eat up her computing time.

 

[NazgulRR]

I ended up just letting the mac mini configure itself at a fusion drive.

Mind telling me the exact process of doing that? Is there a setting for that during El Cap clean install? I'm planning a home-made fusion on my 2009 mini as well soon.

 

[Kaida]

El Cap doesn't do fusion by default anymore, and there must be a reason Apple is doing that

 

[grahamperrin]

El Cap doesn't do fusion by default anymore,

Which version? 10.11.5 or pre-release 10.11.6?