Fusion drives

[Heliotropen]

What is adviced if you have a fusion drive?

To install now, and upgrade the file system when they supports it.

Or to wait untill the new file system supports it?

 

[Cougarcat]

I said wait, but it really doesn't matter. When Apple does add support then you'll get it in a point update; you won't have to do it yourself in Disc Utility.

 

[Heliotropen]

Is there any wait times out?

 

[blackxacto]

You won't like my advice, but I upgraded to High Sierra on my Fusion Drive by Migrating my data from backup. WRONG. Only this week have I realized that I should have wiped the fusion drive clean, then done a CLEAN install of High Sierra, and NO MIGRATION. Install fresh all apps from Apple or trusted vendors, then drag your personal document data from backup, but DO NOT MIGRATE. After regain the clean installed High Sierra Fusion Drive, all my issues went away.

And yes, there are now apps that have lost my settings in the clean install, but I have my backups and I will find these cache or plist files eventually. But the fusion drive runs as sold now.

 

[Heliotropen]

You won't like my advice, but I upgraded to High Sierra on my Fusion Drive by Migrating my data from backup. WRONG. Only this week have I realized that I should have wiped the fusion drive clean, then done a CLEAN install of High Sierra, and NO MIGRATION. Install fresh all apps from Apple or trusted vendors, then drag your personal document data from backup, but DO NOT MIGRATE. After regain the clean installed High Sierra Fusion Drive, all my issues went away.

And yes, there are now apps that have lost my settings in the clean install, but I have my backups and I will find these cache or plist files eventually. But the fusion drive runs as sold now.

Well I actually did just upgrade to High Sierra normally and never upgraded to the new file system, and then later on the ssd part of the fusion stopped working, so I installed an external ssd (thunderbolt) and cloned it onto there.
I still use the old file system; but the entire machine runs great actually - I have to say.

 

[blackxacto]

Are you saying the ssd failed immediately after you installed High Sierra? Sorry if I miss understand.

 

[Heliotropen]

No not at all ... my Fusion Drive had been running very slow for a long time ...

1) I just upgraded to High Sierra trough the app store (without any problems) - no reinstall or anything.

2) A few weeks later, the ssd stopped working ... I had apple support on it, and they said it had physically died.
Luckely it's still "worked", it was just very slow ...
*I have some threads about it in here you can read ...

3) So I installed an external ssd, and cloned the High Siearra onto it ... and boots the machine from that now ...

I still run the old fine system, and it runs great (have run like this form months now).

 

[blackxacto]

Well, in one way you are lucky the fusion still works without a clean install, on the other, the ssd failure stinks, but glad you had coverage. I think my issue was that I had not done a clean install in many years. Lots of crap accumulates, and never gets trashed in migration. Think I just went too far back migrating till I had a conflict.

 

[Heliotropen]

1) Well it's not a fusion drive anymore but external ssd (but it did work - but I maintained the old file system on it, I never converted to APFS) ...
2) I didn't have coverage.
3) The HDD part of the fusion kept working, so I could just clone that onto the external SSD.

 

[blackxacto]

You know, awhile back, it was suggested to use the ssd+hd combo the way you are using it. Sorry to hear you had to buy the ssd replacement. Take care.