Anybody tried this?
How snappy it is?
Is it even possible?
Will Apple ever going to offer fusion with AFPS?
How snappy it is?
Is it even possible?
Will Apple ever going to offer fusion with AFPS?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
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Fusioning mini2018 with external drive?
- Thread starter toke lahti
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- 2018 fusion drive
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Fusion is on the way out. It was a nice way to get some extra performance before NAND pricing starting falling. There is only the iMac left that has Fusion. I would expect that to be going away soon as well.
It’s just easier to have a terabyte home dir, I’ve had for years and I’m not going to pay for Apple’s ssd prices for that...
How about simple external SSD drives like Samsung T5? 1TB is very cheap these days.
If you need a bit more speed, try USB3.1 gen2 SSD drive.
If you need TB3 external NVMe drive speed, I think you are better off staying with a larger internal Apple NVMe driver.
If you need a bit more speed, try USB3.1 gen2 SSD drive.
If you need TB3 external NVMe drive speed, I think you are better off staying with a larger internal Apple NVMe driver.
T5 is over $200 in Europe and hdd is sitting on my desk.
But running the whole system from external is an option.
I'm just guessing that fusion would be a lot snappier than usb-ssd for system drive.
When fusion drive has pcie ssd, iops are about 100k, with T5 they are about half of that.
It should be doable, once a TB3 drive is recognized, boot into recovery mode and use diskutil over Terminal there.
But you have to carefully secure the cabling / contacts to make sure the connect stays forever, it only takes one yank to toast the logical volume especially if it is a boot partition.
EDIT: wait, I may have remembered wrong, I only managed to software RAID stripping between an internal and an external drives on a Mac. I think CoreStorage will refuse to use an external physical volume.
But you have to carefully secure the cabling / contacts to make sure the connect stays forever, it only takes one yank to toast the logical volume especially if it is a boot partition.
EDIT: wait, I may have remembered wrong, I only managed to software RAID stripping between an internal and an external drives on a Mac. I think CoreStorage will refuse to use an external physical volume.
The thread title:
"Fusioning mini2018 with external drive?"
Trying to do this makes NO SENSE at all.
The internal drives on the 2018 Minis are so fast that "fusing" them with an external drive will be like putting a ball and chain on them -- it will slow them down.
Just use the external drive "as an external drive", with as many drive icons on the desktop as you need.
"Fusioning mini2018 with external drive?"
Trying to do this makes NO SENSE at all.
The internal drives on the 2018 Minis are so fast that "fusing" them with an external drive will be like putting a ball and chain on them -- it will slow them down.
Just use the external drive "as an external drive", with as many drive icons on the desktop as you need.
There was some hassle in setting this up, though probably less than reinstalling with an attempt to create a fusion drive.
I just setup my home directory on my external SSD drive, but I had to put it in a subdirectory on the drive.
I remember those ads where there was a Dell with absurd amount of cable clutter and in the 2nd picture, a mac and no cables at all.
Then Tim saw that ad and had an idea: ”what if we could sell all those cables with a great premium?”
Comparing new mini to my mini2012, which has internal fusion, it’s one device vs. 3 devices...
The first USB-C cable I ordered was the wrong one. Only USB 2 speeds. I'm sure I'll find a use for it sometime, for something that doesn't need speed. Maybe a future iDevice with USB-C that I can use for power.
Then I went looking for a USB C cable with 10gb speed. I assumed that it required USB-C on both sides, but ended up with one that used the old connector on one side. I'm getting the 10gb speed, but I don't want to waste the old port on the computer so I'm trying again. At least I have good performance for my home directory on external drive.
I've now upgraded the OS, activated some software. With the big changes, my first time machine backups are going to take some time. 1 across the network, retaining my old history, so it is having to prune a bunch of old history.
Then I went looking for a USB C cable with 10gb speed. I assumed that it required USB-C on both sides, but ended up with one that used the old connector on one side. I'm getting the 10gb speed, but I don't want to waste the old port on the computer so I'm trying again. At least I have good performance for my home directory on external drive.
I've now upgraded the OS, activated some software. With the big changes, my first time machine backups are going to take some time. 1 across the network, retaining my old history, so it is having to prune a bunch of old history.