"I wasn't able to save my data, fortunately I have copies of the truly important things backed up in multiple areas."
Can you afford to spend $30?
If you can, I suggest you get one of these (two items shown, either will do):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00APP6694...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00APP6694
or
http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Dock...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003UI62AG
Then, buy or scrounge up a "bare" hard drive (can be either a 2.5" or a 3.5" SATA drive).
Put the drive into the dock, initialize with Disk Utility, download CarbonCopyCloner.
Use CCC to "clone" the contents of your internal drive to the backup.
A CCC backup is BOOTABLE (you CAN'T do this with Time Machine) and is in POFF (plain ol' finder format) -- just connect it and go.
Spend a few bucks (not much), do what I outlined above, and you will be PROTECTED from losing your data again.
Closing thoughts .
I suspect we're going to be seeing MANY MORE postings here from users who have had "unfortunate experiences" like the OP to this thread. As slick as the fusion drive concept looks on the surface, for most end-users, underneath it's a disaster waiting to happen.
With a single hard drive -- or with "separate" (UN-fused) SSD and HDD -- if the drive has problems, it can still be possible to get the data off of it. With a fusion drive, if it fails, everything is gone and I'm not sure if most current data-recovery software will even work with it.
Even the "recovery partition" may not help. I'm going to _guess_ that the recovery partition on a "fused" volume is located on the SSD portion of the logical volume. If the SSD fails, the logical volume won't mount and the recovery partition may be "un-reachable". Not only will the SSD be "lost", but the contents of the HDD may be lost as well.
Of course, others are going to reply that you can recover from your backup. But the reality is that many (most) folks with fusion drives probably aren't going to keep backups. Simply the way it is.
The "better way" is to just maintain two volumes, SSD for the OS, apps, and user accounts -- and keep other stuff on the HDD (including movies and large amounts of music files). This will result in a computer that actually runs FASTER than a fusion drive will. All it takes is a little awareness as to "where things are".
Again, it won't be too much longer before we start seeing postings to the effect, "help, my fusion drive failed, I've lost everything, what do I do now?" .
Can you afford to spend $30?
If you can, I suggest you get one of these (two items shown, either will do):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00APP6694...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00APP6694
or
http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Dock...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003UI62AG
Then, buy or scrounge up a "bare" hard drive (can be either a 2.5" or a 3.5" SATA drive).
Put the drive into the dock, initialize with Disk Utility, download CarbonCopyCloner.
Use CCC to "clone" the contents of your internal drive to the backup.
A CCC backup is BOOTABLE (you CAN'T do this with Time Machine) and is in POFF (plain ol' finder format) -- just connect it and go.
Spend a few bucks (not much), do what I outlined above, and you will be PROTECTED from losing your data again.
Closing thoughts .
I suspect we're going to be seeing MANY MORE postings here from users who have had "unfortunate experiences" like the OP to this thread. As slick as the fusion drive concept looks on the surface, for most end-users, underneath it's a disaster waiting to happen.
With a single hard drive -- or with "separate" (UN-fused) SSD and HDD -- if the drive has problems, it can still be possible to get the data off of it. With a fusion drive, if it fails, everything is gone and I'm not sure if most current data-recovery software will even work with it.
Even the "recovery partition" may not help. I'm going to _guess_ that the recovery partition on a "fused" volume is located on the SSD portion of the logical volume. If the SSD fails, the logical volume won't mount and the recovery partition may be "un-reachable". Not only will the SSD be "lost", but the contents of the HDD may be lost as well.
Of course, others are going to reply that you can recover from your backup. But the reality is that many (most) folks with fusion drives probably aren't going to keep backups. Simply the way it is.
The "better way" is to just maintain two volumes, SSD for the OS, apps, and user accounts -- and keep other stuff on the HDD (including movies and large amounts of music files). This will result in a computer that actually runs FASTER than a fusion drive will. All it takes is a little awareness as to "where things are".
Again, it won't be too much longer before we start seeing postings to the effect, "help, my fusion drive failed, I've lost everything, what do I do now?" .
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