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DYI Fusion drive setup

W

wysiwyg1972

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 2, 2012
190
152
Toronto, Canada
So I bought a Mac mini. My first Mac since my powermac 7100/66 running system 8 many many moons years ago (1994?). No, I have not been using the same computer for so long. I actually moved to the dark side and now am ready to go back (and learn Mac OS all over again)..... Anyhow, to my question..

Got the mini i7/2.3/1TB late 2012 and immediately decided to install a SSD before even starting to use it.. Got myself a doubler kit from ifixit and waited for it to arrive with the Mac waiting in its box :)

One I install the 2nd drive, I was planning to make my own fusion drive, but have been advised against it. Apparently it won't behave like a real "Apple fusion drive". Is this true? From what I hear, in the DYI setup, all files are copied to SSD until full rather than just moving the commonly used files like the real FD do. Is this true? If so, I will just keep both separate and manage it myself.

Thoughts?

THX
 
Last edited:
Most of the older terminal command type setups didn't make true fusion drives. Using the functions built into OS 10.9+ is suppose to create a true fusion drive in a mini. There are several guides about... I don't have a reference handy. I'm sure someone will jump in here soon.

Oh here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1707008/
 
wysiwyg1972 said:
So I bought a Mac mini. My first Mac since my powermac 7100/66 running system 8 many many moons years ago (1994?). No, I have not been using the same computer for so long. I actually moved to the dark side and now am ready to go back (and learn Mac OS all over again)..... Anyhow, to my question..

Got the mini i7/2.3/1TB late 2012 and immediately decided to install a SSD before even starting to use it.. Got myself a doubler kit from ifixit and waited for it to arrive with the Mac waiting in its box :)

One I install the 2nd drive, I was planning to make my own fusion drive, but have been advised against it. Apparently it won't behave like a real "Apple fusion drive". Is this true? From what I hear, in the DYI setup, all files are copied to SSD until full rather than just moving the commonly used files like the real FD do. Is this true? If so, I will just keep both separate and manage it myself.

Thoughts?

THX
Click to expand...

I'll just say I have the same machine, wether that matters or not.
I added a Samsung 840Pro 256 SSD then started reinstalling Mavericks, the moment I entered Disk Utility from my USB Boot drive, DU noticed an SSD + a HDD and asked if it should "fix" my fusion drive. Well, this machine never had a fusion drive but this is what I wanted so I thought why not and Mavericks created the Fusion Drive prior to installing the OS.

All I can say is that I am showing a 1.25GB single drive and I'm getting 500+MB/s read and writes.
Is this what I wanted? Yes
Is this exactly what a fusion drive does? Exactly? I don't know and it isn't "that" important.

I just wanted more space than the 1 SSD I had but I wanted faster read and writes than the 1 HDD I had and this gave me the best of both worlds.
 
If you're a fan of Apple's user home folder system, use fusion. If you like you're own structure for files use it as 2 drives. You can also use Timemachine for internal backups of the OS with 2 drives.
 
ColdCase said:
Most of the older terminal command type setups didn't make true fusion drives. Using the functions built into OS 10.9+ is suppose to create a true fusion drive in a mini.
Click to expand...

Agreed with this. Older versions of disk utility were not fusion aware. It was 10.8.something (3 or 4), that began to create true fusion drives.
 
Ok, thanks. So it learns, just like the Apple ones, correct? Also if I boot into the recovery partition and do the "fix" when prompted, it will create the fusion but retain my recovery partition, right?
 
Any SSD should work just fine now, so long as it's faster than your HDD at least, as Core Storage apparently does test the disks before deciding whether to make a Fusion Drive or not. While SSDs are generally much faster than HDDs, some older, smaller ones are actually pretty slow (particularly on write speeds). If you've got any more recent SSD though it should be fine.
 
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