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icemantx

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 16, 2009
538
618
I have a late 2014 27” iMac with a 3TB Fusion drive and I am going to split the drives up to now have a new Samsung 860 SSD and keep the 128gb Flash drive that came with the iMac.

How would you recommend I setup the new iMac from a time machine backup?

I have seen other posts about how to replace the HDD and split the Fusion apart so no immediate questions on that. Where I have some questions is how to best restore the Fusion backup to still use the 128GB flash drive along with the new SSD.

Thanks!
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,164
13,210
How I'd set it up:

Internal blade 128gb SSD would become my primary boot drive:
- OS
- applications
- basic accounts (no "large libraries")
It will be the fastest of the two, so I would want it to be the boot drive.

Samsung SSD:
- large libraries (such as pics, movies, music, etc.)
- other file storage (items accessed infrequently)

And also:
An EXTERNAL backup drive which can be platter-based or another SSD.
Then PARTITION IT and do the following:
- CLONED BACKUP of boot drive (one ALWAYS wants to have a SECOND "bootable to the finder" drive within reach)
- backup of the Samsung SSD (again, I prefer cloned).

And perhaps even:
A SECOND external backup which serves as your "off-site" backup.
 

icemantx

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 16, 2009
538
618
Thinking about upgrading the blade to 2TB instead of or in addition to the HDD to SSD. Is it worth upgrading both? Would you use the SSD as a time machine backup or maybe a clone of the blade? Or just leave the HDD and use for things like movie files?
 
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