Second SSD for Big Sur Install. Thoughts ?

[Airsculpture]

I am currently running Catalina off an external 500GB SSD. After an aborted and quite frankly horrible install experience last week, I decided to purchase a second 500GB SSD to do an Internet Recovery install of Big Sur fresh on the new drive.

That way I can test drive Big Sur without messing up my Catalina drive and if I decide to revert to Catalina, I can just boot again from the original drive and use the newly purchased one as a fast clone until such time as I try again.

Thoughts ? Is this possible to do a clean install in DR mode to the new newly formatted SSD ?

Any downsides ?

 

[Juicy Box]

You didn't mention what Mac you have, nor the external SSD you purchased.

I think it is a good idea to have a second bootable drive with the old OS installed just incase something goes from with Big Sur.

Is this possible to do a clean install in DR mode to the new newly formatted SSD ?

Yes, it shouldn't be an issue.

Any downsides ?

Without knowing all the info, it is hard to give an informative answer to this question.

Personally, I would install the OS on the internal drive first to make sure any and all firmware gets installed. After that, either reinstall, or clone to the external drive.

 

[Airsculpture]

The internal drive ( the reason I'm running Catalina from an external SSD ) is a super slow 5400 HD which makes Catalina almost unuseable.

The two externals I have are Samsung T7 500GB SSD. The current set up with Catalina zips along quite nicely on my 2017 iMac with 8GB RAM.

I have also have a separate external hard drive I use as a clone for back ups with SuperDuper!

 

[Juicy Box]

The internal drive ( the reason I'm running Catalina from an external SSD ) is a super slow 5400 HD which makes Catalina almost unuseable.

Installing to the internal drive was just for any possible firmware with the OS update, not to use long term. One the OS is installed to the internal drive, you can wipe or whatever.

The two externals I have are Samsung T7 500GB SSD.

This should be good, the only downside I see with using the T7 is the lack of TRIM support when using MacOS.

 

[Juicy Box]

You could replace the HDD in the Mini with a SATA SSD. It isn't that difficult on your Mac.

It would give you a speed boost and you will have TRIM support.

 

[Airsculpture]

There is a version of the Catalina OS on the internal drive too so that is kept up to date but not used for every day use as I boot from the external SSD.

 

[Airsculpture]

Just an update. Worked perfectly on the new external SSD. Currently have two SSD external drives, one with Catalina and one with Big Sur.

So far I'm not hating Big Sur although I can see improvements are needed and bits of wasted space as others have reported.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

You might want to give your internal drive a Christmas present by turning it into a Fusion drive.
Put aside 128 Gbytes of a SSD and combine the internal slow HDD and the 128 Gbyte partition of the fast SSD into a Fusion drive according to this article. There are others, but I found this one works for me.

You do not have to use up a whole volume of a drive to make a Fusion Drive. You can build one from partitions. I split up a 1 Tb HDD into two 500 Gb partitions and a 250 Gb SSD into two 120 Gb partitions. I was then able to put together two Fusion drives of 500 + 120 each, and have Mojave on one and Catalina on the other. Both worked very well.

This does erase all the information on both partitions that you build the Fusion drive from.

I have been running Big Sur on an external Fusion drive made this way and it has been fast, robust and reliable.

 

[Airsculpture]

Why would I spend money on getting an internal fusion drive when I can run both Catalina and Big Sur on my external SDDs and everything is running swimmingly ?

Whether to spend money on cracking open a sealed iMac and putting a fusion drive in there wasn’t really the question.

The benefit I have currently is I can test drive Big Sur on one SSD and if I don’t like it, switch back to the other with Catalina.

If I decide to stick with Big Sur, I will use the other SSD as a clone, and a very speedy back up drive.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Apologies, I didn't make myself clear.
You can turn your existing slow internal HDD into a faster Fusion drive by combining it with 60 or 120 Gbytes of fast SSD. No cost is involved, just use what you have to make it more efficient. It's up to you.

 

[Airsculpture]

Sorry Dave I don’t follow

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

If you want to do this.
It means erasing your internal drive.

1. Read the article I linked above to decide if you want to go ahead with this
2. Partition one of your SSDs so there is a 120 Gbyte partition that is empty. Name it something like SSDFusion
3. If you need to, back up your Internal HDD.
4. Erase your Internal HDD and name it something like HDDFusion
5. You can use 'diskutil list' to list all your drives and volumes, but if you named the volumes like in steps 2 & 3 you can then use - 'sudo diskutil coreStorage create FusionDrive SSDFusion HDDFusion'
   When you do this, it will list a line that starts with "Core Storage LV UUID". See the article
6. Format the Fusion drive with the command -
   'sudo diskutil coreStorage createVolume [insert UUID here] jhfs+ "Fusion HDD" 100%
7. You can use whatever name you like for your drive. The command formats 100% of the Fusion drive as journaled hfs plus (normal Mac format) and gives it the name in "inverted commas"
8. Once your drive is up and running it looks like a normal Mac Volume. You can then install Catalina or Big Sur onto it. The installer will partition up the Fusion drive into a protected System Volume and normal Data Volume.

The result is a drive that has the capacity of your HDD + your SSD partition, with, in most cases, the speed of the SSD. What happens is that when you start copying files to the Fusion Drive, it copies to the SSD first. When it is full, it copies to the HDD (at HDD speed). When you are done, the system quietly rearranges files so that there is always about 5% of the SSD empty. This means when you copy files up to a few GBytes, there is empty space on the SSD to copy to.

As you use the system, files are rearranged so that most-used files (Operating System, Applications, most-used documents) are on the SSD part for speed.

You just need to make sure the SSD that you are using for the Fusion drive is always plugged in to the computer.

Hope this helps.

 

[Airsculpture]

Yep that makes sense Dave.

I should say :
1. I’m hardly using much of the 500 GB SSD I have plugged permanently into the iMac
2. I’m not actually using any of the internal HDD ( it has an install of Catalina by default as I was using it on the first few days I had the second hand machine ) as I decided to get an external SSD
3. All my media is housed on another external 5TB drive

So unless I’m mistaken, whilst what you propose would speed up the useage of the internal drive, as I’m actually not using it and will most likely in the future only use it for archive of files, I’m getting the maximum speed I can using the whole external SSD barring getting an internal SSD drive fitted inside the iMac

I assume that’s right, but i think if circumstances change I’m sure I will use the method you pointed towards in the article

Cheers for that Dave.

 

[Airsculpture]

By the way, after a clean install is this a normal look

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

It certainly does appear to be normal. Top drive is a Fusion drive after update to 11.1. The Seagate below that is still on 11.0

 

[Airsculpture]

Thanks Dave. What about that disk image at the bottom ?

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

If the installer disk image was mounted at the time you opened up Disk Utility, it shows up like that.
Sometimes it may even show up if it had been mounted when Disk Utility was running and later ejected.

 

[Airsculpture]

Came home and it was gone

 

[El Gran Mago de Mixcoac]

Can you do this with the full capacity of both drives? I have a Macbook Pro Mid 2012 with a 1 tb SSD and a 500 Gb Hdd and I have been looking everywhere to get Patched Sur to work with Fusion Drive, I also tried with Catalina and the issue always seems to be the same I can't install neither Catalina nor Big Sur onto a jhfs+ disk, so i have tried to create a FusionDrive with the APFS, obviously I have also failed on my attemps to do this to the fact that my Hdd fails to format on APFS.
I can successfully manage to do the FuaionDrive when I tried with the jhfs+ format but every time I tried installing MacOs I get a notification saying that I can't install it cause it's not a valid CoreStorage.
I use this computer for homework and editing video and photos so the Fusion Drive idea sounded like a perfect way to give me a boost on speed for college and work, and also to save me some bucks, I don't really want/need a Catalina booter in my Mac, so I don't have the need to partion my drives.
Also I want to know if what I'm doing is actually a good idea cause after a while it seems like I just got more trouble than solutions. Thanks