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What is fusion drive? Selecting an SSD and setting up Fusion Drive on MacBook Pro

Fusion Drive is an innovative technology that involves the joint operation of a hard drive and an SSD drive. It appeared in 2012 Mac models.

iMac and Mac mini computers equipped with Fusion Drives will still receive support for the new APFS file system, contrary to the original. MacRumors reports this with reference to an email of corresponding content sent to one of the publication’s readers by Craig Federighi himself.

Already on September 25, Mac users will have the opportunity to install a new version of the operating system. Among others, it will bring a new APFS file system. However, as it turns out, not all Mac owners will be able to use it. For some it will remain inaccessible. We are talking about computers that are equipped with Fusion Drives.

Recently, Apple has increasingly begun to equip Mac computers - the company is gradually abandoning it in favor of a combination of hard drives and solid-state drives. Typically, this symbiosis consisted of a HDD of a certain capacity and a 128 GB SSD - not that much, but enough. However, in this situation, Apple decided to save money.

After it was successful in Cupertino, I decided to please customers and slightly expanded the possible configuration of my all-in-one PCs. And although the innovation concerns only SSD drives, it should have a positive impact on sales of these computers in the second quarter of this year.

Today, service engineers from McFix are struggling with the problem of increasing speed when using a combination of SSD and HDD drives and creating their own

Contrary to the expectations generated by the appearance of the first SSDs in consumer devices, it is now quite clear that a total transition to solid-state drives is impossible in the foreseeable future. Manufacturers of NAND Flash memory have made great strides in terms of reducing the cost of chips, but the price per gigabyte of capacity on magnetic disks is still an order of magnitude lower than on SSDs. In addition, with each step of Flash memory to a thinner production standard, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure the reliability of reading the charge in the cell and the required number of rewrite cycles. Hard drives, on the contrary, still have an inexhaustible reserve for increasing capacity in a standard design with the usual GPP/GMR heads (Perpendicular to Plane / Giant Magnetoresistance) and several exotic technologies in the future.

Flash memory is most widely used in mobile devices, where the advantages of solid-state drives fully justify the higher price per unit of volume. If we talk about Apple, as a manufacturer of undoubtedly expensive equipment, it can install SSDs in computers that rival hard drives in capacity, which is what we see in the top configurations of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display. And the only Apple mobile device that still comes in a hard drive configuration is the aging non-retina MacBook Pro.

In desktop computing, it's not easy even for Apple to dismiss the hard drive as the base storage option. While the savings principle applies to a limited extent on the Mac Pro (fully converted to SSD), all three base iMac models that Apple currently produces have a 500 GB - 1 TB hard drive. There are all-SSD options up to 256GB or 512GB, which require an additional investment of $200-$500 on top of the terabyte HDD configuration. And between these extremes is the Fusion Drive, which is an array of 128GB SSD and 1TB or 3TB hard drive. Upgrading a Mac to Fusion Drive in combination with a terabyte drive also costs $200, so the choice is not easy. This is what we will talk about.

Note Prices shown are for the American Apple Store. In Russia, an upgrade from a 1 TB HHD to a Fusion Drive costs RUB 7,960.

To be honest, the author of this article has not expected anything good from hybrid drives for a long time. So far, none of the solutions tested by 3DNews has come close to the goal declared by the manufacturers - to combine SSD performance and HDD capacity with an affordable price. Most “hybrids” are built according to a single scheme: a small solid-state component is used as a cache, which duplicates frequently requested information from the main storage device - the HDD. In some cases, SSD is also used for write caching. It is assumed that after a certain period of adaptation, the cache begins to duplicate the most commonly used data - OS and application files, and piles of rarely used resources remain on the HDD. In this concept, it is natural that the larger the solid-state component of a hybrid drive, the higher the average performance. For example, 8 GB of Flash memory soldered on Seagate SSHD drives is clearly not enough for the system to be as responsive as all-solid-state storage. At best, we can talk about an intermediate position of this kind of “hybrids” between SSD and HDD, although in numerical terms it’s not even an average.

A more efficient approach is implemented in Intel Smart Response Technology, which allows you to use a separate SSD of up to 64 GB as SSD cache (provided that the system is built on one of certain Intel chipsets). But at the same time, the price is rising, and for this reason, few off-the-shelf computers and laptops enjoy such luxury. Finally, with a fairly large SSD, the thought already arises: shouldn’t caching be abandoned and allocated entirely to the OS and programs as a separate volume? Actually, this is what they did with the WD Black 2 drive, which is a terabyte HDD and a separate 120 GB SSD in one case. But again, savings on SSD components, multiplied by raw software, do not allow WD Black 2 to be cited as an example of a successful hybrid drive.

⇡ Meet Fusion Drive

So what can Apple add to this? The recipe for Fusion Drive is basically the same as that of the Jew from the joke: “Put in more tea leaves.” The solid-state component of the array in Macs is a 128 GB SSD, and, importantly, with high-quality controllers.

In principle, this in itself is a satisfactory configuration for comfortable work. With some discipline, you can keep the OS and all your running files within the 128 GB SSD capacity (ask MacBook Air users), and manually store your media library and other heavy resources on the hard drive. However, Fusion Drive is Fusion because the SSD and HDD are combined into an array. In this case, the final result depends on how exactly the SSD is used.

Apple iMac 21.5" Mid 2014

The total volume of the array is equal to the volume of the individual components. We tested the 21.5-inch iMac, and in our case that's 1,128 decimal GB (1 TB HDD plus 128 GB SSD). That is, we can immediately say that the data is not duplicated, the SSD does not serve as a cache. Instead, tiering takes place: frequently needed data goes to the SSD, and stale data goes to the HDD. Question: How are priorities determined? But more on that later.

⇡ Fusion Drive: components

First we need to understand what kind of hardware we got. The iMac and Mac mini models until 2013 used variations of the Samsung PM830, which is not the worst drive for the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Now Apple has widely implemented SSDs with a native PCIe interface, which promises a significant increase in performance. Hard drive - 1 TB in a 2.5-inch form factor for the younger iMac and Mac mini or 1-3 TB in a 3.5-inch form factor for a 27-inch iMac.

The System Information utility displays the SSD manufacturer. Judging by the name APPLE SSD SD0128F, this is the same SanDisk drive that can be found in the Mac mini, as well as the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display from 2014. It is possible that the alternative option supplied by Samsung may also be available in the Fusion Drive configuration. Both drives are connected via PCIe 2x interface.

SSD SanDisk, photo iFixit

The SanDisk SSD is based on the Marvell 88SS9183 controller, which we previously met using the example of the Plextor M6e. The chip has a native PCIe interface with two lanes, version 2.0, and transmits data via the AHCI protocol (as opposed to NVMe, which is specifically designed for solid-state drives). Eight channels are provided for connection to Flash memory chips. Of course, the TRIM command is supported.

The SSD itself is made in a proprietary form factor, but those who like to save money can try their luck with third-party sticks by building their own Fusion Drive or using the SSD separately. It's just not as easy to do with an iMac as it is with a Mac mini.

The Marvell controller is combined with Flash memory chips made by SanDisk. Judging by the marking 05131 016G, this is eX2 ABL MLC NAND memory produced using the 19 nm process technology. Its distinctive feature: some of the cells operate in pseudo-SLC mode and serve as a cache, which speeds up write operations and at the same time extends the life of the chip by defragmenting requests. However, there are hardly many such cells here, since the standard volume of about 7% is reserved in the drive (the difference between the number 128 GB in binary and decimal terms), which is also used for garbage collection, replacing failed cells and other service functions.

There are eight packages on both sides of the board, each of which contains two 64 Gbit (8 GB) NAND devices. Thus, not only are all eight controller channels filled in the drive, but also interleaved NAND devices are used.

In general, very decent components for an SSD. But we’ll leave the verdict until the end of the tests, since in the case of Marvell controllers a lot depends on the firmware. Previously, we most often found them in Plextor drives with expertly crafted firmware. Let's see how SanDisk performs.

The hard drive in the iMac 21.5" is a banal 2.5-inch HGST drive of the Travelstar 5K1000 series with a spindle speed of 5400 rpm. There's nothing special here.

HGST Travelstar 5K1000 1 TB (HTS541010A9E662), photo iFixit

⇡ CoreStorage - the basis of Fusion Drive

The implementation of Fusion Drive was made possible due to the fact that, starting with version 10.7 (Lion), CoreStorage is built into OS X - a volume manager, which is a software layer between the file system and the drive. Thanks to it, it became possible to redistribute data blocks between two physically separate devices that make up the array, absolutely transparent to the overlying software stack. In CoreStorage terminology, physical devices are called Physical Volume and can be connected into a Logical Volume Group, which has a contiguous address space. All that remains is to expand Logical Volume on top of this, which is presented to the OS as a regular volume. Then software comes into play that manages the migration of data between echelons.

Attentive readers may notice that there is another entity in the diagram called Logical Volume Family, which is a container for Logical Volume. Logical volumes enclosed within LVF inherit its properties, the only one of which so far can be full-disk encryption - this is how the FileVault 2 service built into OS X works.

If desired, the design can be disassembled using commands from the Terminal, booting into OS recovery mode or from an external drive, and then using the SSD and HDD as separate drives. On a Mac with Fusion Drive, Windows can also be installed into the Boot Camp partition without any problems. The latter is cut from the end of the logical volume and can include almost the entire address space of the hard drive, but does not extend to the SSD. The Windows installation program, like the subsequently installed OS itself, sees Mac partitions, which leaves the possibility of accidentally killing the entire contents of the Fusion Drive. When you subsequently install OS X from scratch, Disk Utility, having detected familiar hardware, will offer to reassemble everything as it was with complete destruction of the data.

⇡ How it works

Since in the case of Fusion Drive we are dealing not with cached, but with echelon storage, the first question is where the data written to the logical volume initially goes. It turned out that as long as the SSD capacity is enough, it is used exclusively for recording. Using Dynamo, the backend component of the Iometer test utility, a file of over 128 GB was created on the disk, and in the process the load of the drives was recorded using iostat. At first, access was made exclusively to the SSD, but as soon as the file volume became larger than the capacity of the SSD minus the installed OS, the load was completely switched to the hard drive.

Immediately after the recording ended, the fs_usage command showed a wave of CoreStorage calls, from which RdChunksCS and RdMigrCS trigger data migration between array echelons. The fourth column of the listing also shows that the data is moved in chunks of 128-512 KB. Thus, due to the large scale of movements, a side effect is data defragmentation. If you sum up the calls, you get a volume of around 4 GB. Subsequent recording attempts showed that each time the first 4 GB of the file ends up on the SSD, and then CoreStorage evicts the same amount of some other blocks onto the hard drive. That is, there is always a 4 GB reserve on the SSD, which ensures recording of freshly received data at high speed.

The average speed of sequential reading and writing of 256 KB blocks with a queue of four commands from the SSD is 754 and 391 MB/s (binary), respectively. Very worthy - despite the fact that operations occur on top of the file system. Read/write speed on HDD is 82-88 MB/s.

But how to cause data migration in the opposite direction - from HDD to SSD? This turned out to be quite easy to do with entire files. To get directly into the hard drive's address space, the SSD was filled with a long write of a large file, and at the same time a 2GB file was created with randomized contents from /dev/zero using dd. After the recording stopped, migration immediately followed, clearing 4 GB of space on the SSD.

The first read of the file took place at a speed of 87 MB/s (most of the load was recorded on the HDD). But the second time, the file was already read exclusively from the SSD at a speed of 427 MB/s (purge guaranteed preliminary clearing of the cache). However, it is easy to notice that the speed is far from the maximum: the file ended up on the SSD in a fragmented state.

Further experiments showed that Fusion Drive can also transfer individual pieces of large files. From the middle of a 400 GB file, which due to its size was mostly located on the HDD, a range of 2 GB blocks was read. Two passes of looped reading for 30 seconds cause some blocks to be moved to the SSD and a sharp increase in overall performance. But in order for all the blocks to end up on the SSD and the reading speed to reach maximum, it took as many as 34 passes! Interestingly, this method also worked for writing data to the same range. In the latter case, the peak speed was reached on the 15th pass.

Red - reading from SSD (disk0), blue - mainly from HDD (disk1). Green - block migration after read iteration

It turns out that the algorithms by which Fusion Drive selects data for migration operate at both the file and block levels. Moreover, the files have priority. Accessing select blocks inside files is considered by CoreStorage to be an atypical scenario, and it takes a long time to require these blocks to be promoted. Well, the iMac is not the best candidate for a database server, and the preference for whole files leads to less fragmentation.

In the next step, we'll test the Fusion Drive's SSD separately and compare it to other high-performance PCIe or SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs.

From installing Optical Bay to choosing an SSD and combining it with an HDD.

IT journalists sometimes forget that not all users delve into the nuances of certain software or hardware products as much as they do. That’s why I was very surprised when I saw a friend’s MacBook Pro 13 2010 with an HDD disk and DVD drive, which have not yet been replaced with something more useful using standard means or through OptiBay.

This MacBook is almost six years old and isn't as fast as I'd like it to be. And this is especially noticeable when opening serious applications like Photoshop or something similar. I advised the owner to replace the HDD with an SSD, which would give a serious increase in speed. But not everyone can afford a solid-state drive of normal size.

I asked a friend about the frequency of using CD/DVD. He said that the last time he opened the drive was three years ago. I told him that accelerating the physical memory of an old MacBook Pro or iMac with minimal investment is possible with OptiBay, an inexpensive small-capacity SSD and a complete HDD through Fusion Drive. The case was suggested by MacPlus specialists - thank you very much.

1. Educational program for dummies - getting acquainted with Fusion Drive

Fusion Drive is a specific software and hardware complex from Apple, which is designed to combine SSD and HDD to work together. It automatically sorts frequently and infrequently used data and intelligently distributes it between drives based on the owner's individual work habits. This gives an increase in productivity without expensive components.

And this is our case. The budget is minimal, but the needs are maximum. Of course, ideally, just replace the HDD with an SSD of reasonable capacity. 500 GB of physical memory would be enough for him, but a solid-state drive of such a volume is expensive. And the combination of 128 GB SSD and 500 GB HDD in Fusion Drive will be the best solution. Fortunately, you can knit them yourself.

2. Choosing an SSD - focusing on “cheap and cheerful”

Any SSD designed for laptops is suitable for installation in Optical Bay. I don’t think that in this case we need to delve into the nuances of certain hard drives - this is too big a topic that would be suitable for a separate article. I’ll just give you simple advice that I use myself - focus on the average cost or the notorious “golden mean”, as well as read-write speed, number of rewrite cycles and compatibility with Mac.

As for the volume, in our case the choice is obvious - 128 GB. There is no point in taking less, and the price of more capacious options is frankly “biting”. But if you have a large budget, you can also look at 512 GB or 1 TB models. Then for Fusion Drive you can also take the most capacious HDD that you can generally find on sale (I myself have never seen anything larger than 2 TB).

By the way, MacPlus specialists will help you choose an SSD for your MacBook.

3. Install SSD in MacBook Pro or iMac instead of HDD and HDD via OptiBay

Note! In the case of a MacBook, the SSD must be installed instead of the HDD, and not in Optibay. Only in this case will it be possible to achieve the maximum speed of Fusion Drive.

Short instructions for installing OptiBay in MacBook Pro

1) Remove ten screws using a special Philips screwdriver:

2) Open the lid of your MacBook simply using your fingers:



3) Disconnect the battery cable using any thin-edged plastic tool:





4) Disconnect the AirPort/Bluetooth cable and camera cable. Remove them from their designated grooves:







5) Disconnect the antenna cable:



6) Remove these five screws:

7) Pull out the AirPort/Bluetooth node and subwoofer:



8) Disconnect the right speaker and hard drive cables:







9) Remove these three optical drive screws and pull it out:



10) Disconnect the drive cable and remove the mounting bracket screws:



11) Remove the two battery screws:

12) Remove the battery using the special lever:

13) Disconnect the battery cable:

14) Remove the two screws that hold the HDD:

15) Pull out the holding panel and pull out the disc using the special tab:



16) Disconnect the HDD cable:

17) Remove the screws from the HDD:

18) Remove the plastic spacer from the OptiBay:

19) Install the HDD into the OptiBay and return the spacer, secure the HDD into the OptiBay with screws and screw on the mounting bracket, install the OptiBay and SSD into the MacBook using the reverse sequence of steps:

Short instructions for installing OptiBay on iMac

1) Pull out the protective glass of the screen using special suction cups:







2) Remove the eight screws that secure the screen to the case:





3) Lift the display slightly above the body:

4) Disconnect the Vsync, backlight, data cable and thermal sensor cable:















5) Pull the screen out of the case:

6) Remove the four optical drive screws:

7) Disconnect the thermal sensor and optical drive cables, and pull it out:

Important! There are a lot of cables in classic iMacs that have DVDs. Connectors and cables are fragile. And MacPlus often received broken computers after attempting to upgrade on its own. Of course, many people do it successfully themselves, but it’s still worth thinking about. Repairing such things is already more difficult.









11) Remove the plastic spacer from the OptiBay:

12) Install the HDD into the OptiBay and return the spacer, secure the SSD into the OptiBay with screws, install the OptiBay into the iMac using the reverse sequence of steps:

Keep in mind that you can also install an SSD on a new iMac and enable Fusion Drive on it. But in this case it is much more difficult to do, so it is better to turn to specialists.

4. Create a special bootable USB flash drive with the system

But before that: After installing the SSD, you need to check whether Trim is working by default, or whether it will have to be enabled manually.

And further: immediately after assembly, when you turn it on for the first time, you should reset the nvram parameters (keep it on when you turn it on alt+cmd+r+p until the greeting signal repeats), which can in some cases get rid of incomprehensible glitches.

First you need to download the distribution kit of the OS X El Capitan operating system. For the convenience of further manipulations, it is better to immediately rename it to something simple - Elcapitan. We do the same with a flash drive (8 GB and higher) - Disk. Next, open the terminal built into the system and enter a fairly simple command, where Disk is the name of the drive, and Elcapitan.app is the name of the distribution:

sudo /Applications/Elcapitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/DISK –applicationpath /Applications/Elcapitan.app –nointeraction



5. Back up your computer data

Of course, it is best to back up data on a MacBook Pro or iMac using standard OS X tools - using Time Machine. To do this, you need to open the platform system application and carry out the appropriate manipulations. We saved backups to a simple external hard drive, but you can also use Apple's proprietary Time Capsule.

6. Fusion Drive setup - home stretch

To “clean” install the system and configure Fusion Drive, insert the bootable USB flash drive into the computer and reboot it while holding down the Option key. We select the external media as bootable, and after this procedure open the terminal. To avoid mistakes, we immediately need to familiarize ourselves with the list of installed disks using the appropriate command:

diskutil list

Next, the Fusion Drive is created using the disk utility built into the system, to which we will issue all the necessary commands through the terminal. It is important not to mix up the disks. In this case, Fusion is the name of the new group. After its creation, the utility will provide the name of the combined Logical Volume Group in the format 34WD6RDE-6564-F2R0-B7F4-FT35EERB. Here is the required terminal command:

diskutil cs create Fusion disk0 disk1

Finally, you need to format the resulting volume group in HFS+. It is in this case that the long set of letters and numbers that the utility assigned to the Logical Volume Group will be useful to us. As soon as the operation is completed, you need to continue installing the operating system, following the instructions of the installer - there is absolutely nothing complicated here. And here is the formatting command for the terminal:

diskutil cs createVolume 34WD6RDE-6564-F2R0-B7F4-FT35EERB jhfs+ Fusion 100%

Pros and cons of Fusion Drive

Pros:

  • Cheaper than SSD, larger capacity;
  • Fusion Drive can also be set up on fairly old Macs;

Minuses:

  • If one drive breaks, it is very difficult to recover the data. The entire Fusion Drive dies;
  • “Disassembling” Fusion Drive is a very complex procedure;
  • Fusion Drive speed is still not equal to SSD speed. He's slower;
  • Fusion Drive is subject to all the "sores" of SSDs. For example, it is undesirable to use programs that constantly access the disk.

Not for the sake of stupidity - for the sake of necessity. Instead of output

After completing the system installation and restoring your own backup data through Time Machine, you can begin to enjoy much more productive system performance. Special disk tests show that Fusion Drive is almost as good as SSD in terms of write and read speed. Therefore, in this case, we saved money, but got the upgrade we wanted.

Hello Geektimes! Surely many continue to use MacBook Pro computers from 2011-2013 (those with an optical drive) and want to replace their device with a newer model. But if doing this is problematic for some reason (for example, due to crisis prices), you should not write off the “old man” - there is an alternative option that will give the device a second wind. Its name is Fusion Drive.



First, a few words about what Fusion Drive is. In simple terms, this is a software RAID array with the ability to analyze the frequency of data use. Files that are used more often are stored on the SSD, while the rest of the information is on the hard drive. When using data from the HDD, the system transfers it to the SSD, so the operating speed becomes several times faster.

Old MacBooks had hard drives with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm, which is not at all impressive in modern realities. Therefore, when installing Fusion Drive, which implies the presence of a solid-state drive, it would not be amiss to upgrade the HDD - ideally to 7200 rpm.

Many people believe that an SSD with Fusion Drive will not be of much use, and it is easier to put the system on a solid-state drive and store the rest of the information on the HDD. However, such a solution has a lot of disadvantages, and is there any significant speed loss with FD? Let's try to answer this question.

First, you need to decide on the choice of SSD. Since this post is on the OCZ blog... well, you get the idea :) Below is a comparison table of SSDs. Since we need a SATA 3 interface to connect the drive to the MacBook Pro (2012 model), RevoDrive 350 with PCIe Gen. 2 x8 immediately disappears. In terms of the combination of controller, endurance and maximum read/write, we like the Radeon R7 and Vector 180. By the way, the latter is more reliable due to the presence of PFM+, and the five-year warranty is impressive. To configure Fusion Drive, you can easily choose it, but a lot depends on your needs. If they are limited to studying, surfing the Internet and office applications, you can choose simpler models, but not lower than ARC 100.

As for capacity, it is better to take at least 240 GB. Although a large amount of data will be stored on the hard drive, you may need to temporarily leave large files on the SSD.

Let's say we have decided on the choice of SSD. Don’t rush to tear off the lid of your MacBook and install it - first you need to prepare your computer for such a serious upgrade. Before installing the SSD and setting up Fusion Drive, you must create a bootable drive with the operating system (this can be OS X Yosemite or OS X El Capitan, but no earlier than version 10.8.3). The maximum effect from installing Fusion Drive will be achieved if the system is installed “from scratch” on a ready-made SSD + HDD combination.

To create a bootable USB flash drive, you will need a drive with at least 8 GB of free space and “Terminal”. First, we download the operating system distribution and rename it for ease of entry - say, Elcapitan.

It is also better to rename the flash drive itself (say, to DISK), after which you can safely open the “Terminal” and enter the following command:

sudo /Applications/Elcapitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/DISK --applicationpath /Applications/Elcapitan.app --nointeraction
Where DISK is the name of our drive, and Elcapitan.app is the OS distribution.


The process of deleting data on the drive will begin; you may be required to enter an administrator password. Copying the installation files may take some time, after which the message Done will indicate that a bootable USB flash drive with the operating system has been created.


In the meantime, it’s time...yes, for a backup. Since we will be performing a “clean” installation, it is better to save all important files on an external drive. You can, of course, upload everything to the “clouds” if you have an extra terabyte lying around there. You should not neglect backup: otherwise you risk losing all your data.

Once the boot drive is created, as well as the backups, you can proceed to installing the SSD. It is done using Optibay by moving the hard drive in place of the optical drive (admit it, when was the last time you used one?), and the solid-state drive instead of the HDD.


Optibay

In the MacBook Pro 2012 they are located next to each other. Models with a Retina display, unfortunately, fly by – there’s simply not that much free space to be found.

Before performing any manipulations with the hardware, you must disconnect the battery from the system board.

Replacing an HDD with an SSD is not very difficult - just unscrew a couple of screws on the side plate, remove the hard drive and install a solid-state drive in its place, then secure it with the same screws. To remove the optical drive, you need to disconnect five cables with extreme care. These are cables for the hard drive, Wi-Fi, camera, optical drive and speakers. Once again - we disconnect and connect everything very carefully - these cables really do not like bending, pulling and other rough things, and their replacement is quite expensive.

Only then can you unscrew the screws that hold the optical drive and remove it.

Then we place our HDD (or a new one, if you followed our advice) into Optibay, “borrowing” a special cable from the optical drive, and install it in place of the drive.

Of course, this is a simplified manual, but it allows you to understand that there is nothing complicated or scary about installing an SSD + HDD combination. But before we configure Fusion Drive using them, let's check what speed characteristics our brand new SSD has in order to further compare this indicator with the results of Fusion Drive.

Let's use the BlackMagic DiskSpeedTest utility:


427 MB/s write, 493 MB/s read – a pretty good result, which is as close as possible to the declared one. Well, let's see what the SSD will please us with after setting up FD.

Let's move directly to setting up Fusion Drive. To do this, insert a bootable USB flash drive and turn on the laptop while holding down the Option key. Select the connected drive as bootable, and then open the terminal.

First, you need to view the list of installed disks using the command below - it is very important not to make mistakes here.

Diskutil list
For example, the SSD may be disk0, and the HDD may be disk2. Here everything depends on the specific disk configuration.


Next, the FD is created using the diskutil disk utility, which uses the CoreStorage parameter. A single group of tops is created by entering this command:

Diskutil cs create Fusion disk0 disk1
It is important not to mix up the disks. In our case, Fusion is the name of the new group. After its creation, the utility will provide the name of the combined volume group - Logical Volume Group, in this format:

Diskutil cs createVolume 34WD6RDE-6564-F2R0-B7F4-FT35EERB jhfs+ Fusion 100%
Once the operation is completed, you can continue installing the system. In the future, the necessary files can be transferred from Time Machine, another external drive or the “cloud” - depending on which backup method you chose.

It's time to return to the main question - will there be a loss of speed after installing Fusion Drive? Let's make a control measurement.


It can be seen that, although there are losses, they are small - they are compensated by the ease of use of Fusion Drive. Instead of
installing a separate SSD in the MacBook Pro and connecting an external HDD, we get a full-fledged working solution.

If in previous versions of OS X there was a possibility of losing some data and incorrect operation of the SSD, then starting with Mavericks this has been minimized. Everything also works fine with OS X El Capitan.

So, instead of selling your old Mac, install Fusion Drive - you'll see, it won't disappoint.
Good weekend!

Question: Good afternoon!
Please tell me how much it will cost to replace a 128Gb ssd (as part of the Fusion drive) in an iMac 27" 2017 with a more capacious one, for example 1Tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus or PRO?

If I buy an ssd myself, then it’s clear - from you: original adhesive tape, adapter and work - at a minimum, how much will it cost?

Then another question: where can you put the removed native 128GB ssd? Maybe you buy them back at the residual value or can you somehow take them into account for the work?

Are you installing your new ssd, for example the same 1Tb Samsung 970 EVO Plus or PRO? Maybe you have them at better prices?

According to my needs, I need at least 3TB of total space for all my files and OS. Would it be advisable to install a fast ssd instead of the native one and assemble them back into Fusion dtrive? After all, in theory this will be more efficient and reliable in terms of resources?! After all, 1TB as part of Fusion will take longer to fill up with frequently requested files, most likely there won’t even be that many of them at all, the resource for rewriting is also several times higher than constantly driving a 128, and the speeds are still much higher for the same EVO. Do you think this is justified?
Changing the hdd to an ssd in this case is not justified because I still need at least 3TB in total.

Answer: Good afternoon, Oleg! 1) Installation work (unsticking the matrix, replacing the drive + reassembly/gluing with 3M factory tape) - will cost 4,500 rubles. Adapter for installation - 1500 rubles. Installation and configuration of the Fusion-Drive system between drives - 3,000 rubles. Work warranty - 90 days (3 months). 2) We have our own warehouse of spare parts; we do not buy components from customers (you sell them yourself, or use them at your discretion after removal). 3) Such SSD drives are available for sale (on order), but we have our own markup for them. Their prices will be average market prices. 4) We think so. In your case, this is justified. The only thing is, in total, such an upgrade can cost (like a downed Boeing). But it's possible. Contact us, we will be happy to help you. Best regards, MacPlus!

Question: Good afternoon! Please tell me how relevant it is to make Fusion Drive now? This means does everything remain the same under Sierra and will it be great on the future High Sierra? I planned to make it on the Mid-2011 iMac FD. All reviews on FD are quite old, I would like to know about the relevance. Thanks in advance, Vlad.

Answer: Good afternoon Vlad! Making a fusion drive is quite important to increase the speed of the hdd drive and combine them into one. The only disadvantage of this service is that if one hard drive fails, there is a risk that both drives will fail at the same time.
Sincerely, MacPlus.

Question: Good afternoon, while uninstalling windows from Imac, due to the reluctance of windows to be deleted, I formatted this partition and then deleted it, but now there is not enough 200 GB on the shared disk (this is exactly the size of the disk with windows). Is it possible to solve this remotely?

Sincerely,
Alexei

Answer: Good afternoon! Unfortunately no, to solve this problem you need to bring it in for a free diagnosis

Question: Hello. can you tell me? I have an imac 27 retina 1TB, I want to remove the fjn drive, split the ssd into two partitions, and put bootcamp on one and leave the second under osx. The question is this: If I split, say, 120GB into 70GB for bootcamp and leave 50GB for OSX. I split the hdd into 300 for Windows and 700 for OSX. Can I then make a fantasy drive from the 50ssd and 700hhd? and leave the rest for the bootcamp? and a question about the breakdown, should this also be done through the terminal using the resizeStack command?

Answer: Hello, Konstantin! In any case, you immediately need to format both disks and create a fusion, and only then split the resulting (single) disk into partitions. Partitioning must be done through "disk utility"

Question: Hello. I removed FusionDrive according to your instructions. Now I have two disks showing 26GB and 1000GB. But when you try to boot from an installation flash drive with 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, a prohibition sign (crossed out circle) appears on the screen and will not boot further. Please tell me what is causing this, can it be treated?

Answer: Good afternoon! Most likely you have problems either with the operating system or with one of the hard drives, we can tell for sure only after diagnostics, diagnostics are free.

Question: Good afternoon. The iMAc 2011-mid 27" had Fusion Drive (native hdd 1tb and corsair force 128 gb). After an emergency reboot of the system, the computer stopped booting. The logo appears, the boot slide crawls very slowly, remains literally a little and freezes (waited for 10 minutes -20). disconnect one of the drives (hdd or ssd), then the disk utility successfully sees the disk and does not see any problems in it. That is, disks connected separately will be detected by the disk utility, but when they are connected together, it cannot detect them.
Tell me what to do? And is it possible to somehow restore data from disks (there is no backup copy)?

Answer: Good afternoon! Bring it in for a free diagnosis, we will check it and tell you what can be done.