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mac mini server help please
- Thread starter sundown57
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The easiest way to tell what kind of Fusion drive you have in your Mac would be to do this below.
Go to terminal app and run it
In terminal app
Type: diskutil list
This will list all the disks you have on the Mini and will be listed as disk0 and disk1 etc.. (Do not connect any external drives to avoid confusion)
Fusion drives come with different sizes; 24Gb, 32Gb and up to 128Gb for the SSD side. If you see a small volume such as 128Gb or 32Gb or 24Gb, that's the SSD portion of the Fusion drive and the other should have the size of 1Tb-3Tb. The Late 2012 Mini BTO option listed to have Fusion option as 128Gb with a 1Tb hard drive.
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Please use Migration Assistant and it will migrate the files back from your external backup to the new Mini and it will handle the rest.
Before you re-install anything, on the desktop finder, go to the Apple icon and select "About This Mac". Then click on Storage. It will list your internal drives (please disconnect all external drives to avoid confusion). Post it here if you can for us to see. If you have a Fusion drive, it will say so. If you have a split Fusion drive, then it will list the SSD portion as Flash Storage and the other as the 1Tb platter drive. Looking at your diskutil list result, I can only see 2 1Tb drives. If they are Fusion drives, the combined storage of 1Tb with a SSD, mainly the 128Gb version, would be 1.1Tb instead of just 1.0Tb as shown on diskutil.
Maybe I'm missing something? I think that if there are two mechanical hard drives in the Mini then it simply cannot have a fusion drive. AFAIK there is no such thing as "fusion drive", that is a marketing term. In reality there would be one hard drive and a separate SSD inside. That would leave no room for a second hard drive.
Agreed. Although, it could have been a concatenated volume. Apple's software RAID component does allow for that. You get the convenience of a single volume from multiple drives but no performance increase.
Yes, do not (re)create a Fusion Drive, especially now that you've moved up to Catalina. APFS + Fusion <> friends.
That is true. However, since the OP said he took the Mini apart and installed a SSD, I assume that he actually saw two hard drives in there originally.
Yes. I never had a multi-drive config directly from Apple, but they could have concatenated the two 1 TB drives to provide a single 2 TB Macintosh HD volume. Again, no performance boost, just for convenience. Although, I wouldn't see a point unless 2 TB drives weren't available at the time. If they were, it would make much more sense to mirror them. But anyway, back to topic.That is true. However, since the OP said he took the Mini apart and installed a SSD, I assume that he actually saw two hard drives in there originally.
Once you've installed up to Catalina, go to Storage and check those 2 drives. I suspect they are platter drives. A Fusion drive is basically 1 SSD drive on one bay and 1 platter drive on the other bay and Apple combined them into 1 volume, hence the name Fusion. The total storage would be 1.1Tb = (1Tb + 128GB SSD). A platter drive provides only 1.0Tb for 1 Terabyte. And to add to more confusion is that some people associate an Apple Fusion drive as the same drive like what Seagate currently offers on their Momentus XT line or now known as the SSHD drive, which is basically a SSHD (a hybrid SSD+platter drive). It is NOT. The Seagate SSHD is a one drive unit where as an Apple Fusion drive is a 2 drive unit.
To make sure you have platter drives, in terminal type in diskutil info disk0 or disk1 and it will list whether it is a solid state drive or not. If it's not for both, then you have a pair of 1Tb platter drives.
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to clarify . I bought 2 2012 mac mini servers. both Identical. the one i was working on this morning i did take apart, it had 2 1TB rotary hard drives. they are ST1000LM024 to be exact. on that machine I did take one out and put in my SSD thats when it booted to recovery and said the fusion drive is not set correctly ( or something like that ) thats when i came in here and you guys got me going with a reinstall. ( machine 1 is done ) but no fusion.That is true. However, since the OP said he took the Mini apart and installed a SSD, I assume that he actually saw two hard drives in there originally.
Now I have hooked up the second mini, that one has no OS. I did go to recovery, terminal. diskutil and those are the pictures I posted of the second machine. it also has 2 hard drives, same as first machine but i do not see any thing about fusion this time. so right now im reinstalling an OS on the second machine just so i can get in and look around.
I didn't add any switches to the command, so maybe that's why. The diskutil tool doesn't report the drive type on mine. And, as you can see the screenshot, the Disk Utility GUI doesn't show the physical drives when in a Fusion configuration.
disk1 is an SSD. Bigger than what Apple would have included but slower, not PCIe -- speaking of such, I think, Apple only offered Fusion configs on Macs that had a PCIe and SATA connector for drives.
Of course, you can determine drive type by viewing System Information/Profiler.
Try diskutil info disk1 which should tell you what type of SSD drive it is as diskutil list only list drive sizes. When the OP first installed the SSD in place of 1 of the 1Tb platter drives, the installer told him the Fusion drive is not setup, which was true because the SSD is not yet initialized. Apple Fusion drive is basically a 2 drive setup and not to be confused with the Seagate SSHD which is also a hybrid SSD+hard drive setup with a similar intent for the PC and Macs, but it is a one drive setup with the SSD built inside the drive controller of the Seagate HD.
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Am guessing that you just "confused" the software since it saw one hard disk and one SSD. The only way that configuration could have existed in an original Mini would have been a fusion drive.
Ah, yes. I don't use CLI often, thus don't look up or recall all of the commands, switches, etc.
If I read the OP's message correctly. His first Mini 2012 server is setup now with a Fusion drive (240Gb SSD+1Tb), but the second one is stock which will be setup as normal with 2 platter drives.
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WHY would you want fusion? Your SSD should be the boot drive and the hard disk can be used for data. These 5400RPM drives are really slow, topping out around 100MB/sec however your SSD should run at around 500MB/sec. Aside from that, as has already been said, fusion drives and APFS are not a very good idea. Initially they were not supported at all but that was added later.