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How to build your own fusion drive

So, after the new announcement of FUSION drive, I am wondering if it is possible to create your own FUSION drive setup on an older machine like my MBP. Since many people replace the original HDD with a SSD and swap the optical drive for the HDD, it seems we may have the hardware components of a FUSION drive available right there.


Now, if OS X ML comes with this special edition of disk utility that supports FUSION drive, or we could download it somewhere, the question is, if we can stitch this together in a way that you have a nice real fusion drive there. It seems having an extra partition on the hard drive for Bootcamp shall be OK, but it seems you cannot partition the flash drive. I could live with this. But instead of having two seperate drives it would be very cool to "fuse" them together to one fusion drive and have ML move the software according to what's used the most.


Has anybody made this work on an older machine yet? Any thoughts?

Posted on Oct 27, 2012 6:08 PM

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Posted on Oct 27, 2012 7:30 PM

The problem with Fusion Drive is that it uses flash memory, not a SSD disk, so it's near impossible to do it, and more when you need a special OS X version for the Macs compatible with Fusion Drive

33 replies

Oct 27, 2012 8:55 PM in response to kamaaina2010

kamaaina2010 wrote:


Has anybody made this work on an older machine yet? Any thoughts?

No one has even seen it on a new machine yet.


In theory, what you ask is possible. HSM has been used for enterprise-class applications for years. Apple is the first company to bring this technology to the consumer market. In practice, it is never going to work without Apple's active support. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Only time will tell. If you really want more speed, I suggest you get a new machine or a 3rd party hybrid drive.

Oct 30, 2012 3:46 PM in response to mende1

mende1 wrote:


The problem with Fusion Drive is that it uses flash memory, not a SSD disk, so it's near impossible to do it, and more when you need a special OS X version for the Macs compatible with Fusion Drive


Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean but I believe your statement is incorrect. Anandtech had a good, but brief, write up on the Fusion drive. The 128GB NAND Flash used in the Fusion drive is a custom form factor SSD that uses the same connector as the MacBook Air.


Full article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6406/understanding-apples-fusion-drive


If they are correct, this special version of Disk Utility just sees an SSD and a HD and makes the magic happen in software....maybe. What we don't know is if there is special firmware in the SSD and/or HD controllers that go along with the new version of Disk Utility.


I doubt there is any technical reasons why a Mac running 10.8.x couldn't run the new version of Disk Utility to create a Fusion drive assuming a SSD and HD are present on the Mac in question. However, Apple may not officially "bless" this set up, limiting it only to new machines. They are, after all, a company that makes money off of computer sales.

Oct 30, 2012 4:11 PM in response to Ewen

Ewen wrote:


homebrew fusion drive isn't currently a possibility for you to buy.


The fusion drive is made up of a separate SSD and a separate HD that are linked together using a special version of Disk Utility.


The question is will Apple limit this functionalty to machines you buy from them with the fusion drive pre-installed or will they let people create their own fusion drives if they have their own SSD and HD installed on a Mac. This would be similar to the way you can create a RAID 0 with Disk Utility now.


Am I guessing they will limit fusion drives to machines they sell that come pre-configured with them.

Oct 31, 2012 4:23 AM in response to Patrick Stein

Patrick Stein wrote:


You can create your own Fusion drive. Have a look here:


http://jollyjinx.tumblr.com

Hardly. That is just some ZFS fan who doesn't seem to understand what Fusion drive really is and thinks ZFS is safer than HFS+ with Time Machine. Any time someone recommends NOT using Time Machine is a red flag to run far away.


Certainly ZFS is a robust file system. When it causes your enterprise-class server to lock up at least once per week you don't have to worry about file system corruption.

Oct 31, 2012 11:46 AM in response to donreith

Exactly, now we just need something more "user friendly". Probably worth to wait a bit and see when some experts get this to work. I agree with kaplucker, this will probably not/never be officially supported be Apple, and maybe they even have some firmware or interface checks that might prevent it, but from a pure logic perspective, it seems possible. Whether that flash memory is solded to the board or an SSD put in should not make a difference. You should be able to logically fuse this capacity together. That said, we'd want the automatic optimization of moving things back and forth according to usage.


For a user like myself it would be great if one could assemble this through the special version of disk utility or a third party tool rather then through terminal commands, but whatever makes it work. ;-)

We shall wait and see. Thanks everybody so far for the comments and the great links!

Nov 5, 2012 6:57 PM in response to kamaaina2010

I found another post here with some more references for additional reading.... 😉


Yes, with just a tiny bit of typing, you can make a DIY Fusion Drive, using a regular SSD. A Mac developer, Patrick Stein—a/k/a jollyjinx—wants us to know that you don't have to buy a Fusion Drive at Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) eyewatering prices, and that you can have it on older Macs.

In IT Blogwatch, bloggers fire up the command line.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/ssd/21255/build-your-own-apple-fusion-drive-no-ne ed-pay-3x-price-itbwcw

How to build your own fusion drive

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