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zoran

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 30, 2005
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Follow the guide noted above, but make sure you clearly understand the restore options if you are currently spanning multiple drives with your backups.
When you say spanning you mean using more than the 2 drives im using at the moment (HDD and SSD)?
 

Weaselboy

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Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
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California
To my knowledge, the only way is via Terminal commands at the recovery partition. I assume the GUI Disk Utility does not support this because they want us to buy Fusion drives from the factory and pay the Apple Tax.

I believe this is more related to changes in macOS versions. Under Mountain Lion the DU auto Fusion process described in my post #8 in that other thread would work, even on aftermarket drives. Then Yosemite took it away and left us with just the Terminal process. I think if you booted to a Mountain Lion USB key now that DU version would still make the Fusion drive for you.
 
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techwarrior

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Jul 30, 2009
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When you say spanning you mean using more than the 2 drives im using at the moment (HDD and SSD)?

Right.

I assume you have already moved some of your content to the HDD? If so, it might be wise to either move stuff back to the SSD (boot drive) and do a backup before proceeding, or copy the HDD content to a spare external drive before proceeding with the Fusion.

I am unsure what the restore will do with the HDD content, so take extra precautions to make sure you can find this content. Read over the link above to the Pondini site, it should help you understand what you will be dealing with. As he states at the top of the page, moving home directories to secondary drives can be problematic. So you have to take that into consideration before you go too far and risk losing stuff. I may be sweating too much about this, but caution could save you headaches or lost content.
 

zoran

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Jun 30, 2005
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Thanks techwarrior... to be frank... im afraid of making a fusion drive!
I remember the old days when i first decided to transfer from WindowsPc's to Apple and the reason was "cause they simply work". :) So i think ill stick to that. I guess ill just use TimeMachine for backing up the SSD and the HDD. Sorry to put you through all these explanations but like i said... im afraid! :)
 

techwarrior

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Jul 30, 2009
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Thanks techwarrior... to be frank... im afraid of making a fusion drive!
I remember the old days when i first decided to transfer from WindowsPc's to Apple and the reason was "cause they simply work". :) So i think ill stick to that. I guess ill just use TimeMachine for backing up the SSD and the HDD. Sorry to put you through all these explanations but like i said... im afraid! :)

I understand, I switched to Mac 7 years ago for the same reason. Fusion Drive has worked flawlessly for me for several years.

Reality is, your 2010 Mac is nearing it's end of life, I know that is hard to come to terms with, but a 7 year old computer is a dinosaur in the tech world. Chances are, a Fusion drive (or both the SSD and HDD) will outlast the Mac.
 

zoran

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 30, 2005
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Chances are, a Fusion drive (or both the SSD and HDD) will outlast the Mac.
Ok i understand what you are saying, but... ts not a matter of "outlast" mate. It's a matter of complexity and creating a fusion drive using terminal seems kinda complicated to me and puts me into difficult paths regarding the integrity of my data. If it was just one huge SSD drive and onedrive making the backup then it would all be simple and clear i guess! :)
 

techwarrior

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Jul 30, 2009
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Ok i understand what you are saying, but... ts not a matter of "outlast" mate. It's a matter of complexity and creating a fusion drive using terminal seems kinda complicated to me and puts me into difficult paths regarding the integrity of my data. If it was just one huge SSD drive and onedrive making the backup then it would all be simple and clear i guess! :)

One large SSD would put you in the poorhouse ;)

The Terminal commands are not too difficult, but if you are unfamiliar with the command line, it can be daunting.

The other way to go, if you don't mind ripping the Mac open again is an SSHD, such as this. I am using this on a Mini 2014 in an OWC Thunderbolt bay as my boot drive. I use an older version of the 2.5inch 1TB SSHD in an older MBP 2008 and it is clearly faster than the standard HDD. For example, boot times with HDD on the MBP are probably 90-120 seconds, 30-45 with SSHD and 15-25 with SSD (I have tried all kinds of combinations on this old workhorse). Boot times on the Mini using this as an external Thunderbolt connected boot drive are in the 30 second range and apps launch with 1-2 bounces. Like Fusion, Seagate uses SSD cache to store commonly used files to speed up the things you use often.

As I understand, iMac supports either 2.5 or 3.5inch drives, this is a 2TB hybrid drive, it appears as a single drive to the Mac, yet gives you most of the benefits of Fusion without the complications. As a boot drive, it is close to the speed of SSD but offers the capacity in a simple way. However, if I am not mistaken, your iMac is SATA II with 3Gbps throughput, so the full potential of SSD and SSHD are not realized in this older Mac (same with my MBP), likely you would see very little difference in speed between SSD and SSHD.

Lots of options...
 
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techwarrior

macrumors 65816
Jul 30, 2009
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Now that seems like a terrific idea, i only have to think over the iMac opening again (which kinda frightens me) and also if there are any WD such drives! I prefer WD compared to Seagate :)

What do u mean lots, more than this one?

Looks like WD is finally making SSHD, info here.

I just mean, we have covered several options in this discussion.
 
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talmy

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2009
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Oregon
I've had several SSHDs in the past. Their problem is that the SS part of the drive is too small. THe new WD drives have 8GB of flash memory (and you have to dig down into the site to find that), slightly less than 1% of the capacity of the 1TB model. That's one third the amount in the recent Fusion drives that have been criticized for having too little SSD. So expect faster boot times but not much else.
 

talmy

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2009
4,727
337
Oregon
In the past? I though they were a new product!

SSHD is just a new name for what was called a "hybrid drive". I bought my first in 2010, a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT, and newer versions in 2011 and 2012, which was my last hybrid drive purchase. Apparently the first hybrid drives came out in 2007.
 
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