Fusion Drive Question

[Zilthy]

I have a late 2013 iMac that I just repaired tonight. The 3gb HDD portion of the fusion drive was dead, as well as the clutch for the hinge (long since dead, was coping using a block to support it).

Although it is my understanding that the hinge could have been covered, I figured as long as I was digging in there to replace a dead hard drive, I would just fix the hinge. Had I known how annoying it was to wind the spring while trying to screw in the replacement bar, I may have opted to have it done for me. A good learning experience, but my poor thumb is still sore from that task.

Back to the fusion drive. My iMac had gotten so slow as to be completely unusable, and after some attempted fixes and debugging, I ended up splitting the drive, and found the 128GB SSD portion was good, and the HDD portion was bad (The HDD was not making any odd telltale noises at that point, nor showing any SMART errors).

After splitting them, and installing Sierra on the SDD, everything was working fine and the HDD portion was obviously the dead culprit.

I replaced the dead HDD with a 1tb SDD.

Now, my question is, is there any reason I would wish to fuse those back together in to a fusion drive before I go too much further? As of right now, I am thinking leave the 128GB SSD for os/apps and use the 1tb SSD for data.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Now, my question is, is there any reason I would wish to fuse those back together in to a fusion drive before I go too much further? As of right now, I am thinking leave the 128GB SSD for os/apps and use the 1tb SSD for data.

Convenience I suppose; both drives become a logical volume so you needn't worry about manually transferring between the two.

Of course with a Fusion drive if one disk fails the whole house comes down, but SSDs are considerably more reliable than HDDs. Providing you've got frequent Time Machine backups for the worst case scenario, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't make them into a new Fusion drive.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

I take it you mean the 3TB platter section is kaput?

There was a recall forn the Fusion drives on that model f.o.c., but I guess it has expired now. How much was the 1TB SSD compared to a new 3TB Fusion Drive?


https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/19/8815721/apple-replacement-program-imac-hard-drive

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Not really worth the hassle IMO.

 

[iamgalactic]

My Fusion drive failed in my 2013 iMac too - the HDD part also. I will never go back to Fusion.

 

[Zilthy]

Yeah, the 3TB platter section (Seagate Barracuda) was gone.

I did not know about the recall, but I doubt I would have had it repaired that way anyway, too used to SSD to go back to platters.

I did not price out fusion drive per se, since fusion is actually two disks, and I was only replacing one of them (the HDD portion with an SSD) but I got the 1TB SSD for $260 (Where a 3TB HDD would be around $85).

I suppose I could have replaced the SSD portion with a larger SSD, but not necessary since my iMac is a bit older and had the 124GB before they got gutted down to 24GB. Shame Apple!!!! But that would have been rather expensive. Expensive enough that if it had been bad (or the 24gb version) I would have just pulled it and not used it.

 

[Old Muley]

The HD portion of my 3TB fusion drive just failed in my late 2013 iMac. We really can't swing a new iMac at this time so I'm replacing the HD myself with a 4TB spinner. What steps are needed to ensure that this will now act as a fusion drive?

 

[Old Muley]

A little more research and I answered my own question. My iMac came with a version of Disk Utilities that will repair a Fusion Drive without having to resort to using terminal. See the Troubleshooting section of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202574