External Fusion Drive

[attis]

I've searched both the forums and the net for a while, but have not found any information about what I'm wondering about...

An external FusionDrive... Most people seem to ask about adding a thunderbolt-ssd to fuse with their internal hdd, or the other way around.

But I'm looking to add a completely isolated, external FD - a 2.5" ssd and hdd. I first thought about putting a couple of ssds in an external raid case, but that would be something like $750 for 1TB (4x256GB). I then looked at the Drobo Mini, which has an m-sata slot for cacheing, but I've read it's not all too fast anyways and Drobos fileformat is hard to recover if the Drobo fails. And the Drobo Mini itself is around $600 where I live (Sweden).

Then I realised I hade completely overlooked the FD that everyone is talking about because Apple manages to make a 1 or 3TB harddrive seem fast as an ssd at a lower price than pure ssd storage.

So, if i get an external 2.5"/3.5" USB3.0-case and put for example a 256GB SSD and a 2TB 2.5" or 4TB 3.5" harddrive in it, could I make it into a Fusion Drive?

This is mainly because I'm thinking about moving from my 2012 Mac Mini 2.6GHz with 256GB ssd + 1TB hdd to the new Mac Pro and quickly would use up the internal 256/512GB ssd that i could afford... I take a lot of pictures and need to be able to work off of the external drive, or have it as fast that is plausible to move the files to/from the drive for working with them. So its not just for storing iTunes music or word documents.

Has anyone tried?

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ So, if i get an external 2.5"/3.5" USB3.0-case and put for example a 256GB SSD and a 2TB 2.5" or 4TB 3.5" harddrive in it, could I make it into a Fusion Drive? ]]

I believe it can be done. HOWEVER -- you will probably have to use Terminal commands to create the fused [logical] drive. I'm going to _guess_ that Disk Utility will not "fuse" two external drives into one logical volume.

Having said that, it doesn't sound like a bad idea.

If you have 2.5" HDD and SSD drives, you might even consider this gadget:
http://plugable.com/products/pss-dd1
Granted, it's a dock (instead of a "full enclosure"), but it's only $32 and can be used for other drives, as well.

 

[attis]

I believe it can be done. HOWEVER -- you will probably have to use Terminal commands to create the fused [logical] drive. I'm going to _guess_ that Disk Utility will not "fuse" two external drives into one logical volume.

I've heard of people managing to make a FusionDrive of their internal 3.5" hdd and an external ssd, but I don't really know how to practically make that happen. I guess I will have to research some more, first about how to make an internal FD and then try to apply it to an external drive...