Wayne...now that I've been running 10.8.3 on my Late 2007 MacBook (3,1) seemingly issue-free, I've been thinking about the next step to truly getting my older MacBook humming.
Last year I removed my internal SuperDrive, replaced it with the internal HDD, and put in an SSD in the hard drive bay as my boot drive. I installed 10.7.5 on the SSD, and use the HDD to store all my media files (iTunes & iPhoto libraries, videos, etc.), with most of my regular-use apps on the SSD as well as the OS. Managing what goes on the HDD and what goes on the SSD was all done manually, with symlinks created on the SSD to point to their locations on the HDD as needed.
I guess my question is... could I now just create a true Fusion Drive setup and have the OS manage all that for me? I've been reading the following blog writeup at OWC which describes how this would be done:
http://blog.macsales.com/17624-os-x...tup-option-for-non-fusion-drive-equipped-macs
A 2007-era MacBook running Mountain Lion with a Fusion Drive setup would be great, and would extend the life of my trusty ol' laptop that much more. Any insights would be appreciated.
🙂
Technically it's quiet possible as the Fusion Drive is a software only storage management. Both of the disks being included (might work with more) are automatically split into three partitions. 1st: The efi-boot partition, 2nd: the part which will be your shared storage, and 3rd the boot helper partition the efi is directed to, to initialize the boot process until your main system can continue booting (as soon as the file system can be read, which can't be done by the efi itself).
As it is software related your success will depend on the System your using. For you it seems to be limited on ML 32 bit for now. This means, that you will have to use Apples beta release of the CoreStorage drivers (responsible for the FusionDrive management), as they are part of the /System/Library/Extensions/ Folder which will be replaced be an old, but 32bit compatible one during the MLPF installation process.
So all depends on the quality of those beta-drivers.
For me, running a 64bit enabled system the Fusion Drive works flawlessly I think... 2 times it actually got corrupted by now, but both times this happened to me after tweaking around with the system to enable iMessage. Once the ACLs got totally corrupted and were unrepairable somehow, and the other time this happened was after I mounted the Volume from an externally booted 32 bit ML installation.
This makes me think you could have some trouble (it's worth trying), but as you will create the FusionDrive from an 32bit enabled Installation tool everything might work seamlessly.
I hope you will try and post your results to support the community.
Here is my FusionDrive enabled officially unsupported system:
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@ hackerwayne & MLforAll - I don't actually now about your plans, but what about releasing the next/following version of MLPF with an 64bit install partition for any mac, as all models being unofficially supported can boot them. Afterwards, you still can copy over the 32bit enabled Extensions folder (and all the other stuff) - but during the installation the number of failures/errors may get reduced.
Another (unwanted) bug report:
at least for me hibernating (deep sleep) does not work at all. If the battery is running low my MacBook just shuts down and if I enable this as my default sleep mode it will restart. Anyway I don't know, wether it's Mountain Lion 64bit on 32bit efi related, caused by the FusionDrive, only related to Mountain Lion, or something totally different... Maybe someone can report on this.
