Mac mini 2014 fusion drive - replace Hdd with ssd

[dkotanid]

Hello dear friends,

wanna ask if i have a general gain or if at all its possible to replace the hard disk 1Tb with an sata ssd?

Then join the 120Gb Pci sata ssd with the new sata ssd to a fusion!

Thanx for answeres (sorry for my english)

 

[Fishrrman]

I suppose this could be done, IF you're willing to open up the Mini and do the surgery.

Another way to get almost the same result:
Buy or put together an -external- USB3 SSD, and then fuse that with the internal PCIe SSD.
The overall speed difference will be slight, but the process will be easier.

Disadvantage:
You'll have to have the external drive connected whenever the Mini is booted up.

Advantage:
You don't have to mess with the insides of the Mini, -and- you'll retain 1tb of additional storage on the internal HDD.

 

[richwoodrocket]

I would go with what Fisherrman said, but put in a 1tb ssd and get a drive enclosure and out the original HDD in it, and connect it via USB to the mini.

 

[dkotanid]

My main goal is the speed and parallel the silance! Thatfor i wanna do that! But i dont know if the data travel up and down all the time cause the speed of the 2 ssd's will be almost near and far from the previous mechanic disk. So the question is, if it will be good idea or not. The surgery is simple for my hands and that solution you suggest me is not comfortable for me.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Do you need the two drives to appear as a single volume in Finder, or is having a traditional two-drive setup OK (such as having Macintosh SSD1 and Macintosh SSD2)?

Fusion uses Core Storage. One of Core Storage's capabilities is to combine multiple physical drives into one logical volume/partition (kind of like the way RAID 5 presents multiple drives as a single volume, but without the data redundancy). In the case of Fusion, it takes that a step further, by moving data blocks between the faster and slower drives to maximize performance (tiered storage).

So here's the thing as I see it - you don't need Fusion if you have two drives of the same approximate speed - not sure what would happen, but it's at least possible that it would be slower than not using Fusion (I hope Apple has some error traps that prevent this).

Sorry, I don't know how to use Core Storage to create a single logical volume from multiple physical drives.

 

[dkotanid]

Do you need the two drives to appear as a single volume in Finder, or is having a traditional two-drive setup OK (such as having Macintosh SSD1 and Macintosh SSD2)?

Fusion uses Core Storage. One of Core Storage's capabilities is to combine multiple physical drives into one logical volume/partition (kind of like the way RAID 5 presents multiple drives as a single volume, but without the data redundancy). In the case of Fusion, it takes that a step further, by moving data blocks between the faster and slower drives to maximize performance (tiered storage).

So here's the thing as I see it - you don't need Fusion if you have two drives of the same approximate speed - not sure what would happen, but it's at least possible that it would be slower than not using Fusion (I hope Apple has some error traps that prevent this).

Sorry, I don't know how to use Core Storage to create a single logical volume from multiple physical drives.

Thank you for the nice answer. That was my point! Probably i will stay with 2 ssd and not one core storage for fusion.