Recommended drives for making a fusion drive

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Recommended drives for making a fusion drive

Hi all

This may be a stupid question but here it is.

I have a late 2012 i5 Mac mini with the standard 500GB HDD and I want to add more storage to it. I have a spare 40GB SSD and a 1Tb SSD so, the question is...am I best to replace the HDD completely with the 1TB SSD or create a fusion drive using both. Or, would it be sensible/advisable/worthwhile using the 40GB SSD for the Fusion drive and keeping the 1TB as external storage?

Sorry for the long winded question, but I don't want to go to the trouble of installing and re-setting everything if its simply not worth it.

Many thanks for your thoughts.

Posted on Sep 3, 2019 6:27 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Sep 3, 2019 6:45 AM in response to David Monteath

If it were me, I would replace the 500GB HDD with the 1TB SSD, hang onto the 500GB HDD for external/internal storage using a USB enclosure or leave it in the iMac and ditch the 40GB SSD.

A 40GB SSD + 500GB HDD isn't much of a Fusion Drive especially with the small SSD. And it's not worth combining the 40GB SSD with the 1TB SSD to make a Fusion Drive. The whole idea of a Fusion Drive is to take advantage of an SSD+HDD where the SSD handles most of the action (contains the OS plus most frequently used files). I also don't think it would be ideal to make a Fusion Drive out of the 1TB SSD and 500GB HDD since the majority of your files would reside on the SSD anyway.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

82,540 points

Sep 3, 2019 7:43 AM in response to David Monteath

It's a little late, but I totally agree with keg55.

I have a a couple of 2012 Mac Mini's with PNY 960GB SSDs, plus a 2010 Mac Mini with a 480GB PNY SSD and going with one large SSD is by far the simplest, fastest and best way to breath new life into a Mac Mini.

FWIW I'm not selling PNY SSDs for Mac Mini's. I bought the 480GB PNY in the 2010 on sale from Best Buy many years ago and then over the years continued buying PNY SSDs to upgrade my later Mac Mini's. With that said, I can't complain much because every PNY SSD that I own, is still in service today.

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