Position doesn't matter. When you run the install, format both drives and install Mavs on whichever one you want.
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How should I set up my new mini with 1TB HDD and 240 GB SDD?
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Position doesn't matter. When you run the install, format both drives and install Mavs on whichever one you want.
okay, what are the best instructions for the install of mavs on the SSD once I install both drives?
thanks!
thanks!
Once you get your new computer, set it up and go to the app store, download the Mavericks install app. You need an 8 GB flash drive.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/1...otable-os-x-10-9-mavericks-usb-install-drive/
Boot to the usb stick then use disk manager to wipe both drives and install as you wish.
You have not seen any reports of what? By putting the entire home folder onto the (much slower) hard drive, you're putting your /users/<user>/Library folder onto the hard drive. To keep it simple this is where a lot of your applications put commonly accessed files . If these files are on the slower hard drive, then clearly there will be a performance impact.
Instead, I would suggest to only put some of the folders on the hard drive, like movies, music and so forth. Then create symbolic links to those folders from /users/<user>/home/those_folders
I think you can do a network based install but I don't know anything about that
Everything with the install went great so far. Partitioned the SSD (Mas OS Journaled 1 partition) and installing Mavericks now from the USB.
Once I am done, and I choose the SSD as the main boot/startup drive, how should I erase the OS from the original HD? How should I format it? Any reason to keep the OS on both drives?
Once I am done, and I choose the SSD as the main boot/startup drive, how should I erase the OS from the original HD? How should I format it? Any reason to keep the OS on both drives?
Well with any luck, you can actually boot from your SSD. I got the grey cross thing when I tried to boot up. I think I formatted the SSD wrong and of course I did it after I wiped the HDD... I'm going to try a fresh download of the thumb drive file and give the install another shot.
Funny thing - I ran the benchmarks with the 16 GB ram installed and got 1150 or so. I ran the same one on my iMac... 350 lol Big upgrade!
You can put your entire home folder on the hard drive, however you still take a performance hit because applications write often to the Library folder.
It isn't as slow as having everything on legacy rotational hard drives, however it is slower than going all solid state.
However, there's an alternative (fairly) simple way to getting most of the solid state performance while having most of your stuff on the rotational drive for logistical simplicity.
Most applications are often writing to files in two specific Library subdirectories: caches and logs. If you can speed up read-write access to those, you've probably eliminated the majority of the disk bottlenecks.
Put your
somewhere on the solid state boot drive, and symlink to them. I generally put these files in the same logical place:
Note that this is very similar to the old Nineties database administration trick of putting logs, caches, control files, and rollback segments on separate hard drives (the old Oracle DBA guide by Loney covered this). This was known as the "22-disk dream database" as each rotational drive held one file for the RDBMS. Spindle contention was reduced to an absolute minimum.
I only bother having Time Machine back up my hard drive (not my solid state boot drive which basically only has OS X and applications). In the case of a catastrophic boot drive failure, I would need to build a new one from scratch, but at least all of the user data is in a Time Machine backup.
The likelihood of a catastrophic boot drive failure is pretty rare, so I'm willing to hedge my bets and not bother backing up my boot drive, even if rebuilding it from scratch would take a day. I can live with those odds. Also, I really won't worry about recovering web browser caches or diagnostic logs. I'm not a bank or insurance company.
This method is really trailer park Fusion Drive, it's not for everyone. For folks like me who deliberately don't make Time Machine backups of boot drives, it works pretty well though.
Note: I am doing this on a Mac mini server (mid-2010) with a 128GB OCZ Vertex3 SSD boot drive, and the factory 500GB secondary HDD.
Anyhow, good luck.
It isn't as slow as having everything on legacy rotational hard drives, however it is slower than going all solid state.
However, there's an alternative (fairly) simple way to getting most of the solid state performance while having most of your stuff on the rotational drive for logistical simplicity.
Most applications are often writing to files in two specific Library subdirectories: caches and logs. If you can speed up read-write access to those, you've probably eliminated the majority of the disk bottlenecks.
Put your
- ~[login]/Library/Caches
- ~[login]/Library/Logs
somewhere on the solid state boot drive, and symlink to them. I generally put these files in the same logical place:
- /Volumes/[bootdrive]/Users/[login]/Library/Caches
- /Volumes/[bootdrive]/Users/[login]/Library/Logs
Note that this is very similar to the old Nineties database administration trick of putting logs, caches, control files, and rollback segments on separate hard drives (the old Oracle DBA guide by Loney covered this). This was known as the "22-disk dream database" as each rotational drive held one file for the RDBMS. Spindle contention was reduced to an absolute minimum.
I only bother having Time Machine back up my hard drive (not my solid state boot drive which basically only has OS X and applications). In the case of a catastrophic boot drive failure, I would need to build a new one from scratch, but at least all of the user data is in a Time Machine backup.
The likelihood of a catastrophic boot drive failure is pretty rare, so I'm willing to hedge my bets and not bother backing up my boot drive, even if rebuilding it from scratch would take a day. I can live with those odds. Also, I really won't worry about recovering web browser caches or diagnostic logs. I'm not a bank or insurance company.
This method is really trailer park Fusion Drive, it's not for everyone. For folks like me who deliberately don't make Time Machine backups of boot drives, it works pretty well though.
Note: I am doing this on a Mac mini server (mid-2010) with a 128GB OCZ Vertex3 SSD boot drive, and the factory 500GB secondary HDD.
Anyhow, good luck.
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Finally got my mini to boot with the SSD - I had to swap positions with the drives. Apparently the SSD has to be on the bottom (i.e. you see it first when you open the mini up)
So far so good!
So far so good!
Your Mac doesn't care where the drive is physically located.
My boot drive happens to be the upper drive bay, but it doesn't matter.
Remember, one can boot off of USB thumb drives and external USB or Firewire drives. Your Mac doesn't give a hoot whether or not the boot drive is in the upper or lower drive bay.
Physical location is basically irrelevant as long as the drive is recognized during the boot process.
Note that I didn't change the drives myself. I paid an authorized Apple Service Center technician to toil (they guaranteed the work). The drive I gave to the repair guy lived in an external drive case just prior to installation into my Mac. I wasn't dumb enough to have him install an untested/blank drive into my computer.
My boot drive happens to be the upper drive bay, but it doesn't matter.
Remember, one can boot off of USB thumb drives and external USB or Firewire drives. Your Mac doesn't give a hoot whether or not the boot drive is in the upper or lower drive bay.
Physical location is basically irrelevant as long as the drive is recognized during the boot process.
Note that I didn't change the drives myself. I paid an authorized Apple Service Center technician to toil (they guaranteed the work). The drive I gave to the repair guy lived in an external drive case just prior to installation into my Mac. I wasn't dumb enough to have him install an untested/blank drive into my computer.
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Well you say that, but I could not get my mini to boot to the SSD until I swapped drives. No idea why but it worked.
everything is working great.
i am simply leaving the original HD as is, which has an OS installed on it, though booting from the SSD. I am storing all my movies, music, and regular files on the original HD, and letting everything else (apps, samples) run off the SSD. Seems to be working great so far. Open to optimization tips from here, though it seems I can manually just organize things between the 2 hard drives.
i am simply leaving the original HD as is, which has an OS installed on it, though booting from the SSD. I am storing all my movies, music, and regular files on the original HD, and letting everything else (apps, samples) run off the SSD. Seems to be working great so far. Open to optimization tips from here, though it seems I can manually just organize things between the 2 hard drives.
Same here, got it all working really well. Very fast machine! I also opted to go with the 'manual' organization method. Make sure you download Trim Enabler or Chameleon SSD (http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.it/index.php) and enable Trim on your SSD for best performance and life.
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how do i use chameleon? i downloaded it but my computer won't let me open it because "it is from an unidentified developer". how do i get around this, and what do i do with the app once I do?
Go into system settings and the Security settings, hit the padlock to get admin access and check the "allow all developers" or something like that.
Once you have it installed, its pretty obvious what to do, hit the slider that enables TRIM support, then reboot and you're done.
not sure you can put TRIM on an HDD but either way, it wouldn't do any good if you did.