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Windows and Fusion Drive

C

crovali

macrumors member
Original poster
I read over a month ago that the 3TB fusion drive does not support Windows on bootcamp. Is this still true? I want to order the 27" ASAP!!
 
Fusion relies on OS X to work. It is not a hardware solution. Though I've read you can partition the HDD drive to use for Windows, and the remaining HFS+ portion is used with the SSD as a Fusion drive in OS X.

A Virtual Machine running Windows might be your best bet.
 
Yeah, it will be really helpful to get clarity on what the issue actually is.

It might be as simple as the boot camp bios emulation needing an update which could be coming soon.

But once it's in people's hands for them to have a play around with it we'll learn a lot.
 
I'll be running any windows apps via Parallels 8. I expect to see decent performance on my Fusion drive:

a) High end 27", 16gb fast ram, 2gb video
b) Parallels should be running on the SSD, which means windows will be on the SSD

We'll see how that works out in January, 2013...
 
The only reason I use bootcamp currently is to play MW3. I sure hope this is not true. I am looking to upgrade to the new 27" iMac and sell my current one.
 
The Phazer said:
Yeah, it will be really helpful to get clarity on what the issue actually is.

It might be as simple as the boot camp bios emulation needing an update which could be coming soon.

But once it's in people's hands for them to have a play around with it we'll learn a lot.
Click to expand...

It's not a boot camp issue. The problem is that Windows has to be installed in the first 2TB of a drive. If you give Windows a 2TB partition it would work, but then OS X would be denied most of its drive space. Win 7 doesn't need BIOS emulation, or boot camp for installation, except for installing the drivers later. It will work just fine with EFI.
 
This is such great information and quite important information regarding the Fusion drive as I was close to making a purchase with the 3TB Fusion Drive option but now knowing that Bootcamp won't be possible on it this is quite a shocker and really put things on a down side for me.

That being said I also don't wanna purchase the regular 3TB option if later down the line Bootcamp will have proper support to work with the Fusion drive. At this point I take it I should hold off on pulling the trigger and making my purchase?
 
wdowell said:
So why does Bootcamp work with the 1TB fusion drive?
Click to expand...
As I understand it (though I don't claim to be an expert), Fusion is a software method of joining two drives into one volume, a bit like RAID 0. People have created Fusion drives from third-party SSDs and HDDs in OS X.
I have no idea why BootCamp works for 1TB but doesn't work in the 3TB. Drambuie's suggestion, that Windows needs to be in the first 2TB of a drive, seems plausible.

(There used to be a limit on old Macs that the OS had to be in a < 8Gb partition, and it had to be the first partition. Plus ça change.)
 
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