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Fusion Drive

T

theguycallskevin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 20, 2017
5
1
I am planning to add a 240GB SSD to my MacBook Pro which has a 500GB harddisk.
Should I make them into a Fusion Drive? or just use the SSD as a single drive?
 
If you don't mind two drive icons on the desktop, I'd suggest letting the SSD remain "an SSD", all by itself. My guess is that it will give you the best performance that way.

Some folks just -have to have- all their stuff on one drive with one desktop icon.
I'm NOT one of them.
I keep no less than 7 volumes mounted at all times. Sometimes up to 10 or 11...
 
Fishrrman said:
If you don't mind two drive icons on the desktop, I'd suggest letting the SSD remain "an SSD", all by itself. My guess is that it will give you the best performance that way.

Some folks just -have to have- all their stuff on one drive with one desktop icon.
I'm NOT one of them.
I keep no less than 7 volumes mounted at all times. Sometimes up to 10 or 11...
Click to expand...


Should I move the OS to the SSD? Anything I need to do so that improve the performance?
Thanks a lot!
 
EnderBeta said:
You'll want to make sure to enable trim.

I use Trim Enabler to enable trim.
Click to expand...

Trim Enabler has not been necessary since Apple provided a way to use the native drivers without hacks in OS X 10.10.4. Trim itself is not required anyway, it is probably better to keep it disabled.
 
KALLT said:
Trim Enabler has not been necessary since Apple provided a way to use the native drivers without hacks in OS X 10.10.4. Trim itself is not required anyway, it is probably better to keep it disabled.
Click to expand...
You're assuming that this person is running Sierra. They have a spinning drive in their MacBook Pro which means it isn't a retina MacBook Pro.

SSDs need trim like spinning hard drives need to be defraged.
 
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I think I could barely understand you guy. Anyway, thanks a lot.
But, just make it more simple for me to understand, my Macbook is 2012-mid type, and running
Sierra 10.12.2
If i want to boost the performance by adding the new SSD, and keep the old files (like photos, movies) on the original HDD, what should I do?

Thanks a lot!
 
theguycallskevin said:
I think I could barely understand you guy. Anyway, thanks a lot.
But, just make it more simple for me to understand, my Macbook is 2012-mid type, and running
Sierra 10.12.2
If i want to boost the performance by adding the new SSD, and keep the old files (like photos, movies) on the original HDD, what should I do?

Thanks a lot!
Click to expand...

Assuming this is the non retina with an optical drive.

Have you already swapped out the optical drive for the SSD?

Before proceeding, once the SSD is installed in place of the optical drive, back up all of your important files.

The way I have created fusion drives in the past is to go into disk utility from boot up outside of macOS and format the drives. Disk utility will see the SSD and platter based hard drive (the one it came with) and ask you if you want to link them. Answer yes and it will make a fusion drive for you.

When you restart your machine it will do a web based recovery and install whatever version of OS X the Mac is setup to recover to. This will take a while because the installer has to download and then run.

Once it is installed go into the App Store and upgrade to Sierra and you will have a newly created fusion drive on your MacBook Pro running sierra.

To enable trim you can use trim enabler. It handles the terminal commands for you. If you prefer the free option you can send a command via terminal. I'll look it up in the morning when I'm at my computer again.
 
OP wrote:
"Should I move the OS to the SSD? Anything I need to do so that improve the performance?"

Yes.
Set it up this way:

SSD:
OS, apps, accounts, data (less the "large libraries", see below).

HDD:
Put the large libraries here, and "reference them" from your accounts (on the SSD).

Also remember to back up BOTH drives to an external drive.
I'd partition the external, and use CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper) to clone both drives to their respective backup partitions.
Nothing beats a fully-bootable-to-the-finder cloned backup in a "moment of extreme need".
 
EnderBeta said:
Assuming this is the non retina with an optical drive.

Have you already swapped out the optical drive for the SSD?

Before proceeding, once the SSD is installed in place of the optical drive, back up all of your important files.

The way I have created fusion drives in the past is to go into disk utility from boot up outside of macOS and format the drives. Disk utility will see the SSD and platter based hard drive (the one it came with) and ask you if you want to link them. Answer yes and it will make a fusion drive for you.

When you restart your machine it will do a web based recovery and install whatever version of OS X the Mac is setup to recover to. This will take a while because the installer has to download and then run.

Once it is installed go into the App Store and upgrade to Sierra and you will have a newly created fusion drive on your MacBook Pro running sierra.

To enable trim you can use trim enabler. It handles the terminal commands for you. If you prefer the free option you can send a command via terminal. I'll look it up in the morning when I'm at my computer again.
Click to expand...


Sorry for replying late. Really thanks a lot~~~
 
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I am learning to add a SSD to my MacBook coz I am not sure if I could do it myself.
[doublepost=1490873778][/doublepost]I am learning to add a SSD to my MacBook coz I am not sure if I could do it myself.
 
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