28 GB SSD portion of Fusion drive vs MacOS High Sierra install.

[Awgd8]

Hi guys,

Currently , I boot up High Sierra from external T5 Samsung SSD and run my Lightroom and Filmora video editing App on the separated (unmounted) internal SSD of the fusion drive.

Since my 1TB fusion drive is already split into HDD and SSD, is it possible to install and boot up MacOS High Sierra from the tiny SSD (28GB) space? I’ll run my (move) my MacOS application to my External T5 SSD. (500GB)

Is this doable ? Any pros and con?
The reason I asked is the internal SSD is x2 to x3 faster than my external T5 SSD where I currently boot my MacOS High Sierra from it.

 

[dianeoforegon]

You can only add one partition to a Fusion drive. This will be on the internal 5400rpm drive. I defused my drive but I have a 128GB SSD. It's big enough to hold my data in my User's Library. All my files are stored on the rotational drive.

Have you considered replacing the tiny 28GB drive with your Samsung SSD? OWC has videos on how to replace drives.

http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

 

[SketchyClown]

The only con is that it's only 28GB. If you have a large iTunes library or large Photos library you'd have to keep them on the 1TB I guess. The base install of High Sierra shouldn't be more than 10GB or so.

 

[Awgd8]

I will definitely move all the Library (photos) and applications to the External T5 SSD.

The reason I’m doing this is the MacOS High Sierra booting up from the T5 external SSD has this very long dark screen delay , about a minute or more, before the real bootup of MacOS shows up on the screen and bootup goes very quick compare to the Fusion drive.

Now my fusion drive is split , I can manually install and boot from the 28GB SSD which is 2-3x faster speed than my external SSD.

 

[Awgd8]

You can only add one partition to a Fusion drive. This will be on the internal 5400rpm drive. I defused my drive but I have a 128GB SSD. It's big enough to hold my data in my User's Library. All my files are stored on the rotational drive.

Have you considered replacing the tiny 28GB drive with your Samsung SSD? OWC has videos on how to replace drives.

http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

Once the warranty is over, I’ll probably do that upgrade. Thanks!

Update: So I finally did it.
Now I boot up from the SSD part of fusion drive with no problem.

I also have MacOS file in the External T5 where I run all my applications from there.

BTW,

I just redirected my Home user from the SSD (28GB) bootup disk to my external T5 SSD and now I don’t have problem with the limited space on my Internal SSD 28GB.
I followed this instruction and works flawlessly.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/25/how-to-move-mac-user-folder-to-another-drive/

 

[Awgd8]

Darn it! Forgot about the page file!
Will not work on the 28G in the long run due to pAge file... It fills up the internal SSD quickly!

No I’m back to T5 external SSD boot drive. Then internal SSD for application that I use more often like Filmora etc.
Then 1 TB HDD for storage.