Fusion Drive with 500GB SSD

[Ember62]

The original 1TB hard drive that came with my 2012 Mac mini i7 crashed. I am considering replacing crashed drive with a 500 GB Samsung EVO SSD. I have a spare 1TB HD and was thinking to create a fusion drive with the two drives, is this a good idea or should keep the two drives separate ?

Also, the $160 500 GB EVO has great specs but I can buy a 1TB OCZ Trion SSD for about $70 more ( which kills the budget). Considering to lower performance of the Trion , is it Better to buy the larger but slower Trion or the smaller but faster Samsung or will I even notice the speed difference?

Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

With 500gb of SSD (flash) storage, I wouldn't "fuse" that drive with any other.
Run the SSD as a "straight SSD", and if you can reclaim the old drive, run it as a standalone HDD.

There's nothing particularly complicated about managing TWO drive icons on your desktop, vis-a-vis just one.

You said the HDD "crashed".
What kind of a crash?
Do you think the drive has failed mechanically?
Or... just can't boot from it?
Just wonderin'...

The fastest and easiest way to add an SSD is to connect it via USB3 and let it serve as "an external booter".
This will yield performance that is the near-equal of opening the Mini and installing it internally.

 

[Ember62]

With 500gb of SSD (flash) storage, I wouldn't "fuse" that drive with any other.
Run the SSD as a "straight SSD", and if you can reclaim the old drive, run it as a standalone HDD.

There's nothing particularly complicated about managing TWO drive icons on your desktop, vis-a-vis just one.

You said the HDD "crashed".
What kind of a crash?
Do you think the drive has failed mechanically?
Or... just can't boot from it?
Just wonderin'...

The fastest and easiest way to add an SSD is to connect it via USB3 and let it serve as "an external booter".
This will yield performance that is the near-equal of opening the Mini and installing it internally.

Appreciate the feedback!

The hard drive is failing and non-recoverable according to disk utility, but the system still boots.
This is the first time I've ever had a warning that a drive is about to fail so I am wasting no time in replacing the HD. I've had more than HD die on me and it's never been at a good time.

I recently liberated The 1TB from my daughter MacBook Pro when I recently upgraded her Mac to a SSD

Where can I find info on external booting?? I'm a infant when it concerns OSX

Thanks Again

 

[Fishrrman]

"Where can I find info on external booting?? I'm a infant when it concerns OSX"

Here is the complete instruction guide:
To boot a Mac from an external (bootable) drive, you do this:
1. Have the external drive connected (via USB3 or other means).
2. Push the Mac's power-on button and boot from it.*

Pretty tough, eh...?

*This depends on whether or not you have the external drive set as "the boot drive" using the Startup Disk preference pane.
If the external drive is selected in Startup Disk, no action is needed (other than to press power-on).
If the startup drive IS NOT selected, you can still boot from it by holding down the option key (at boot) until the startup manager appears. Then select the drive with the pointer and hit return.

 

[hwojtek]

If the stock drive is damaged, creating a fusion drive off it is even more hazardous than running it standalone in this state.
As stated above - a 500GB SSD does not really make sense as a component of a fusion drive. That's still quite a storage space by itself. I'd live with that (worse or better, but I would).
That said, if you happened to work and need to keep very large files but not really need extremely fast I/O (like, for example, seriously large InDesign layouts), a 500GB+3TB combo filled with data would be nice. Although no-one serious would use a Mac Mini for such a task (not to mention there are no 3TB 2.5" HDDs).

So put the 500 SSD as a single drive, discard the stock 1 TB as being of unknown future reliability and have fun!

 

[Ember62]

"Where can I find info on external booting?? I'm a infant when it concerns OSX"

Here is the complete instruction guide:
To boot a Mac from an external (bootable) drive, you do this:
1. Have the external drive connected (via USB3 or other means).
2. Push the Mac's power-on button and boot from it.*

Pretty tough, eh...?

*This depends on whether or not you have the external drive set as "the boot drive" using the Startup Disk preference pane.
If the external drive is selected in Startup Disk, no action is needed (other than to press power-on).
If the startup drive IS NOT selected, you can still boot from it by holding down the option key (at boot) until the startup manager appears. Then select the drive with the pointer and hit return.

Got it!
Appreciate the help!!!