Modded my 2011 MacMini now has big fusion drive.

[philipma1957]

I add a 250 gb samsung ssd and a 2tb seagate to my 2011 discrete gpu mac mini.

Ticks me off that this easy upgrade is not available on the 2014 models.

this model also has 2X 8gb sticks of ram = 16gb

and the AMD RADEON HD 6630M.

so sad this pretty much beats any 2014 for most uses.

In my case htpc /tv dvr/net blogs/youtube/netflix.

 

[DeltaMac]

I add a 250 gb samsung ssd and a 2tb seagate to my 2011 discrete gpu mac mini.

Ticks me off that this easy upgrade is not available on the 2014 models.

this model also has 2X 8gb sticks of ram = 16gb

and the AMD RADEON HD 6630M.

so sad this pretty much beats any 2014 for most uses.

In my case htpc /tv dvr/net blogs/youtube/netflix.

You can have the same fusion drive in the 2014 mini that you have in your 2011 mini. Regular SSD hard drive, and the SSD will be a PCIe blade SSD. From what I read, that still restricts you mostly to what Apple uses. I wonder if anyone has tried the newest third party SSDs that are for the MacPro?

 

[George Dawes]

Fd sucks

I've used the 2tb FD and it sucks , it's ok when nothings happening or you're booting up etc but start moving big files around and multiple copies and the whole house of cards just starts falling down.

Once you hit that 5400 slug and you will , it's a nightmare despite all the hype about this fusion drive stuff.

You want speed get an ssd , simple as that.

No wonder the mac pro doesn't offer the fusion drive as an option , nuff said.

 

[philipma1957]

I've used the 2tb FD and it sucks , it's ok when nothings happening or you're booting up etc but start moving big files around and multiple copies and the whole house of cards just starts falling down.

Once you hit that 5400 slug and you will , it's a nightmare despite all the hype about this fusion drive stuff.

You want speed get an ssd , simple as that.

No wonder the mac pro doesn't offer the fusion drive as an option , nuff said.

You are mis-informed. Mac fusion drives are spectacular for the average user like myself,but hey you are entitled to think what you want.


This is about the 10th one I built
The key to good fusion drives is the ssd can't be
small. Like apple's using 128gb and 1tb hdds they are garbage.

Most of my 2tb seagate holds itunes music and dvr of tv shows. No need for speed . All the speed is on the 250gb ssd. as long as the ssd is a lot bigger then your software the fusion drive works well.

My fusion drives are :

2x of 250gb ssd with 500gb hdd.
1x of 250gb ssd with 2tb hdd
1x of 750gb ssd with 1.5tb hdd
1x of 1tb ssd with 1 tb hdd
5x of 500gb ssd with 1tb hdd

all work well and my clients are happy with them. MY clients do music tracks and mixing for a few pop singers.

My clients love the large ssd + the hdd fusion built mac mini quad cores I sold them.

 

[TimRedBeard]

Do you have a guide that you used to make your Fusion Drive? I'm thinking of making one myself for my 2011 MacMini Server myself. I'm using it as my primary HTPC in my living room. I have a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD and I'm thinking about picking up a 2TB drive as well. Let me know.

Thanks
TRB

 

[Celerondon]

Fusion Drive is Like Grape Kool-Aid - Fast & Sweet

I've used the 2tb FD and it sucks, ...

Once you hit that 5400 slug and you will , it's a nightmare despite all the hype about this fusion drive stuff...

...Mac fusion drives are spectacular for the average user like myself...

...Most of my 2tb seagate holds itunes music and dvr of tv shows. No need for speed . All the speed is on the 250gb ssd. as long as the ssd is a lot bigger then your software the fusion drive works well.
...

What is wrong with George's computer? Did he really "hit that 5400 slug" on a one week old computer? Even though Philip recommends larger SSDs the OEM 128GB SSD-equipped FD should be as he said, "spectacular for the average user".

I wonder if your copy/file transfer system was the problem rather than the Fusion Drive. You did not let a USB 2.0 external drive or some obsolete drivers create a bottleneck on your new computer did you George?

It took me months to break out of the SSD. I keep my most of my bulky photo files on external USB 3.0 storage. The exception is working copies of videos. Sometimes I wonder if some aggressive housekeeping could take my boot drive array back below the SSD threshold. However, I lack motivation to copy all of these video files off of my C: drive. Why? Because I did not notice when my storage burden went past the 128! My 1.1TB Fusion Drive was seamless in operation and functioned as promised. Beachballs are extremely rare on this i7. MS Office components load slower than other applications but without spinning death on the desktop. A check yesterday did confirm that MS Word loads much faster the second time that I start it after an extended period of disuse.

I have performed several upgrades to bring drivers, MS Office, and other applications up to Yosemite compliance. I have seen cases where printer utilities and external optical drives created problems when confronted with the newest version of OS X. Does George really have a slow 2TB Apple configured Fusion Drive or is there some other cause for his problem?