Fusion drive partitioning

[n-i-k-k-o]

Hi folks

I have a new iMac on order for delivery in mid-Feb (or so they say). It's a 27incher with 1Tb Fusion, bought partly as a replacement for a Mac Mini media server with 200gig of Aperture and 150gig of iTunes. I'll also be using the iMac as a replacement for a Macbook Pro for editing photos using Aperture.

I bought a Lacie Little Big 1Tb SSD RAID0 with the idea that I will reserve the Fusion drive just for boot and will relocate all home folders onto the RAID for performance. Then I read about doing this:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Fusion-partitioning.html

So I could create another partition solely on the spinning part of the Fusion drive for storage of the iTunes stuff. Music files absolutely don't need to live on the SSD and with this approach I would get more headroom for both Aperture and iTunes and I make better use of the spinning part of the Fusion storage asset.

Question is: anyone successfully done what Lloyd Chambers suggests?

Thanks

Nikko

 

[hfg]

Why don't you set it up to boot off the LaCie and keep your apps and your home folder there ... it is probably faster than the built in SSD with the RAID-0. Then just use the Fusion drive for your libraries without any partitioning required.

This way your entire personal environment will be on the LaCie, and if you need to send your iMac in for service it will stay safely at home away from prying eyes. And, if you have another Mac, you can plug it into that temporarily until you get the iMac back.

If you do want to partition a Fusion drive, I would simply use BootCamp to create the partition rather than Disk Utility. Seems others have had issues with Disk Utility partitioning the Fusion drive.

 

[ThirteenXIII]

If you do want to partition a Fusion drive, I would simply use BootCamp to create the partition rather than Disk Utility. Seems others have had issues with Boot Camp partitioning the Fusion drive.

confused, use BootCamp to partition as others had issues with Bootcamp partitioning the fusion drive?


I think the fusion drive would be sufficient enough to store your main apps and data, but you can store your aperture library and other libraries there (Recommended) that will give you similar performance in editing and launching the application

 

[hfg]

confused, use BootCamp to partition as others had issues with Bootcamp partitioning the fusion drive?


I think the fusion drive would be sufficient enough to store your main apps and data, but you can store your aperture library and other libraries there (Recommended) that will give you similar performance in editing and launching the application

Sorry ... should have re-read what I wrote!

Yeah, I wouldn't partition the Fusion drive at all either, and just keep all my library data directly on the Fusion drive for activity managed fast access. I don't know how big his Aperture library is (ah ... I see it is 200GB), but on a 1TB really fast RAID-0 SSD he probably has room for that as well.

The OP should also keep a good backup for all the drives!

On my new iMac, I keep my working environment and Aperture library on the internal 750GB SSD, and have a external Pegasus J4 Thunderbolt enclosure where I have made a 1.25TB Fusion drive for slower audio, video, and archive files, and a 2TB RAID-0 Time Machine backup, with a second NAS backup in the basement for longer term TM history.

 

[hfg]

There have been many posts concerning partitioning the Fusion drive and it centers around which version of Disk Utility is being used. The version of Disk Utility shipped with 2012 Fusion models is different from the version generally available with the released Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.2.

This Apple Support document may clear up the issues:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446


Sorry if I mislead you in the above post.


-howard

 

[n-i-k-k-o]

Thanks, Howard. If Apple are supporting it I will give it a try.

Nikko