Replaced 2014 iMac HDD - What To Do With Fusion SSD

[M3Jedi77]

Earlier today I replaced my dying internal 3TB HDD from my late 2014 iMac.

Now I have a 2TB SSD & a 128GB blade SSD (as part of the fusion). The 128GB is faster, but my time machine restored to the 2TB drive.

Is there a simple way to move system files & apps + anything that would benefit from the 128GB SSD's speed to that drive? I currently have 2 separate internal drives on the iMac, just trying not to waste the extra speed of the extra drive.

 

[maflynn]

Are you looking to re-fuse the pair together or just use the 128GB for your home and OS?

For the latter boot up in recovery mode and install OS X on there

 

[M3Jedi77]

Are you looking to re-fuse the pair together or just use the 128GB for your home and OS?

For the latter boot up in recovery mode and install OS X on there

Wouldn't I then lose all my settings? I wish I could selectively install my time machine backup across the 128 + 2TB drives instead of just the 2TB drive.

I'd like my system files on the 128GB for maximum speed, but my iTunes, photos, etc on the 2TB.

 

[marzer]

Wouldn't I then lose all my settings? I wish I could selectively install my time machine backup across the 128 + 2TB drives instead of just the 2TB drive.

I'd like my system files on the 128GB for maximum speed, but my iTunes, photos, etc on the 2TB.

Create a fusion drive, the faster 128gb should default to primary for booting and apps, restore your backup to the fusion drive.

 

[M3Jedi77]

Create a fusion drive, the faster 128gb should default to primary for booting and apps, restore your backup to the fusion drive.

Thanks for the suggestion, I hope thats the case. Is it safe to do a dual-SSD fusion drive?

Do I boot into recovery then fuse the 2 drives via Terminal?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks for the suggestion, I hope thats the case. Is it safe to do a dual-SSD fusion drive?

Do I boot into recovery then fuse the 2 drives via Terminal?

Honestly, I have not seen this done before with two flash drives, but I see no reason it would not work.

Follow the instructions in my earlier post here.

I'd be curious for some feedback from you after.

 

[marzer]

Thanks for the suggestion, I hope thats the case. Is it safe to do a dual-SSD fusion drive?

Do I boot into recovery then fuse the 2 drives via Terminal?

Yes. Perfectly safe. Follow the instructions weasel posted and it will be fine. The process is supposedly able to determine which is the fastest drive to set as boot/app but to be sure list the blade drive first when linking the two drives.

And for the record it's safe to fuse pretty much any mass storage. For testing I've fused various combinations of USB drives, SD cards, SSD drives, even HDD to HDD. Once you get the hang of the command line version of diskutil, you can even add multiple partitions to fusion sets and resize dynamically without losing your data.

 

[M3Jedi77]

Well here are my strange results. Anybody have input as to why things are slower?

Images below are:

3TB HDD + 128GB BladeSSD Fusion (how my computer came from Apple)

2TB Samsung 850 Evo SSD by itself

2TB SSD + 128GB BladeSSD Fusion (this should be by far the fastest, but it is by far the slowest according to AJA SystemTest).

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Your best option at this point is to permanently "split" the fusion drive into TWO STANDALONE SSD's.

Then, boot and run that way.

Doing so will provide you with the fastest speeds available on EACH of them.

Fearless prediction:
Doing it any other way is going to "slow things down", and waste a LOT more of your time...

 

[M3Jedi77]

OP:

Your best option at this point is to permanently "split" the fusion drive into TWO STANDALONE SSD's.

Then, boot and run that way.

Doing so will provide you with the fastest speeds available on EACH of them.

Fearless prediction:
Doing it any other way is going to "slow things down", and waste a LOT more of your time...

Well now I've gone through the major trouble of fusing the 2 drives, then restoring from time machine...

Why are the 2 SSDs fused together slower than the SSD+HDD fuse? Something must be wrong.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Well here are my strange results. Anybody have input as to why things are slower?

Images below are:

3TB HDD + 128GB BladeSSD Fusion (how my computer came from Apple)

2TB Samsung 850 Evo SSD by itself

2TB SSD + 128GB BladeSSD Fusion (this should be by far the fastest, but it is by far the slowest according to AJA SystemTest).

Is it spotlight indexing after the fusion? this may well slow it down and the speeds will take a few days to settle down again. Mainly though how does it feel to you? benchmarks are generally ******** move some big files is it faster??