DIY Fusion drive vs separate volumes

[camner]

I'm going to be installing a 250GB SSD in my MacPro, which currently has a startup volume (HDD) and a Data volume (also HDD).

A simple configuration would be to replace the startup volume with the SSD and continue with the HDD as my Data volume.

BUT, there are files (such as a 30GB Windows virtual machine and frequently accessed files such as Lightroom catalog) that might really benefit from being on an SSD.

I know it's feasible, but would be advisable to create a DIY Fusion drive and just use one (logical) drive, or manage two separate drives (SSD and HDD) myself so that I manually put the things I'd want on the SSD there and leave the less often accessed items on the HDD?

Thanks for your advice.

 

[benwiggy]

There are many threads on this forum and elsewhere arguing the toss about Fusion Drives.
To sum up:

Benefits: large capacity, fast drive. OS will manage where everything goes, much more efficiently than you ever can, as files in the same location can be on different devices, depending on how often they're used.

Disadvantages: You can't spend hours organising your files into whichever device you reckon might be best, and then knitting the whole thing together with sym links.
If you need partitions, that cuts into the advantages.

 

[Fishrrman]

An "un-fused" SSD will run a little faster than a fused one -- although I'm not sure just how noticeable this becomes in "real-world" day-to-day usage.

If you have no trouble managing your drives (and partitions) now, and you want more control over "what goes where", you may not really need fusion.

With fusion, you (as the user) "give up" control of where files go.
If you want to keep more of that control, don't "fuse".

It's really your choice.

 

[camner]

Thanks both for your replies. I've read as many of the threads here about Fusion drives as I could find. Most of them seem to discuss whether the DIY version really works as well and with as much reliability as the "real McCoy."

T