DIY Fusion Drive on MacBookPro8,2

Is the SSD installed in the Optical bay? If it is Apple uses a cheap, Low Quality, Low transfer rate, cable for the optical bay.

The chipset and the SATA port are capable of doing the SATA 3 specs but the cable is the worst. I suspect Apple does this for a reason. So Users have a had time installing fast drives in that bay.

JohnDCCIU wrote:

Update on my attempt at a Fusion Drive....the bottom line is that I may just have a bad OWC SSD drive and it may not be an issue with the Fusion Drive technology after all.

I booted from my original clone and destroyed the LVG, ending up with my original HD and the OWC SSD as separate, native drives.

I then ran diglloyd Tools' "Test Reliability" check on the native SSD and found that it experienced the same disk i/o errors as the Fusion Drive had been experiencing. The same test on the HD ran without problems.

I'll try the same drive on the main controller or externally via Firewire to try to isolate the issue to the drive or the controller, and then have a chat with OWC Tech Support to see what they recommend. I have a smaller OWC SSD drive that I can try on the same controller too.

I'll update this thread with the outcome, either way.

Shootist007 wrote:

Is the SSD installed in the Optical bay? If it is Apple uses a cheap, Low Quality, Low transfer rate, cable for the optical bay.

The chipset and the SATA port are capable of doing the SATA 3 specs but the cable is the worst. I suspect Apple does this for a reason. So Users have a had time installing fast drives in that bay.

Yep, my OWC SSD is installed in the optical bay. OWC had done a bunch of testing with this model because of the issues reports that 3Gb/s SSDs should operate reliably in the optical bay, but 6Gb/s cannot (even though some have a 6Gb/s controller). They did sell a replacement shielded cable early on (for the models with the 3Gb/s controller), but they say that the EFI firmware update completely resolved the problems, so they discontinued it.

But I'll test this SSD on the main controller to see if it suddenly stops reporting I/O errors....if it does, then that crappy optical bay cable or something else is at work here, and I'll try a replacement third-party cable or something and see what happens.

Happily, it's definitely not intermittent: I can reliably produce the problem quickly, so once it's resolved I can give the Fusion Drive another try.

Shootist007 wrote:

If it is Apple uses a cheap, Low Quality, Low transfer rate, cable for the optical bay. The chipset and the SATA port are capable of doing the SATA 3 specs but the cable is the worst. I suspect Apple does this for a reason. So Users have a had time installing fast drives in that bay.

Yes. Evil Apple planned the Fusion drive 5 years ago and every move Apple has made has been a calculated ploy to keep people from building their own Fusion drives with 3rd party components, thus saving them dozens of dollars at the cost of only a few weeks of effort. Why else would Apple put a low transfer rate cable in the optical bay? Congratulations on exposing this malicious plot.

Been dealing with these types for over a year now, since I joined these forums.

And I've been dealing with threadjackers for seven times as long as that.

You are all just wasting your time. There are perfectly safe, reliable, and reasonable ways to use SSDs. If you want to hack up hardware and software like this, get a PC and Linux.

JohnDCCIU - how did the tests of the ssd in the primary bay go?

danibjor

Not sure if relevant, 2010 27" iMac, Samsung 256g SSD installed beside HDD, using OWC install kit.

Found this link most useful for setting up the logical volume:

http://www.petralli.net/2012/10/analyzing-apples-fusion-drive-in-an-attempt-to-r etrofit-an-existing-macs-with-an-ssd-and-a-traditional-hard-disk/

Novice with terminal, followed this with care. Successfully set up the logical volume.

Used Recovery via the net to install clean OS X 10.8, during install setup, asked it to migrate my files from Time Machine backup disk which I'd connected. It's transferring files to the clean OS as I type. I'm confident I have single volume, whether it's FD remains to be seen.

I did not recover from Time Machine, used clean install, as stated.

Possible any other type of recovery may trample on Logial Volume mapping?

Thought the link migh help, use "DIY Fusion Drive Technical Doodles" to find it, if link no good.

Provides the clearest instructions I've seen for setting up the mapping.

That's all from me, hope it helps you.

JohnDCCIU - Any updates on your attempts?

Thanks

Last year I put a Samsung 128GB SSD into my primary HD bay, and bought a $10 optical bay caddy for the 750GB HDD that came with my MacBook Pro 8,2. I made an alias User folder on the SSD so it looks to my mechanical drive for everything in the user folder (documents, music, movies, pictures etc.), while the OSX and applications are all stored on the SSD. Very fast and efficient system. No commands required in terminal, just change where the user folder is and you have a virtual fusion drive. R/W speeds are that of a SSD on SATA III in the primary bay, the SATA II interface in the optical bay would drastically reduce these speeds for the SSD.

Apologies, just found my way back to this thread.

IMac boots up in less than a minute - Aperture boots up very quickly, as does FCP X. Each of them take less than a minute to load.

I have fair amount of HD video events in FCP, moved them off external Seagate to new Mac FD drive.

Just booted up FCP, took just on 30 seconds, with previous event loaded, all others ready to be accessed.

Clicked on external drive - no events on it, then clicked on Mac FD again, FCP took just on 30 seconds to open up events on it, on a different event this time.

The upgrade was a four hour experience - hairy at times ( particularly trying to connect the SATA cable to the SATA port - took an hour to this alone). Having done it, I'm extremely pleased with the results. Wouldn't reccommed for everyone though.

I have the same model as you. Crucial M4 256 and the 750gb drive from apple. Using the SSD in primary and HD is the caddy, I have had zero issues getting it built. On the instructions I followed, they list people seeing issues with the SSD in the optical bay. Give it shot and see if issues are resolved, then it's an easier position to start trying to determine what the root cause is.

I just did the DIY Fusion Drive upgrade in my Early 2011 15" MBP yesterday after seeing the benefits of a fusion drive running in my girlfriends new iMac. I was a bit hesitant due issues being reported with the early 2011 15" MBP and getting the DIY fusion working, but all was smooth sailing once I had CC'd the existing drive.

I had been putting it off as I'd bought a optical bay doubler some time ago, but havn't found the time necessary so I bit the bullet and did it, I'm so glad I did.

I used a cheap optical bay from here( http://dx.com/p/designer-s-2-5-sata-to-sata-hdd-caddy-for-apple-macbook-pro-more -121002?Utm_rid=27465822&Utm_source=affiliate), a Corsair Force 3 240GB and used the existing 750GB 7200RPM Seagate drive that I already had in there.

I did shuffle things around by putting the HDD in the optical bay and the SSD in the primary drive slot. my hardware reports does show that the HDD in the optical bay is running at SATA 2

Very happy with the performance and loving the boot time, Probably the only thing I've seen so far is that my MBP runs a bit hotter, possibly due to having two drives running, and I'm guessing this will impact on battery life so will be monitoring that over the next few days.

I've been watching the drives do there things via iostat and things are definately getting shuffled around so appears to be working as advertised.

I've had no issues getting it all up and running other than the time it's taken to restore data from USB urggh! I'd love a thunderbolt drive, sigh.

Stephen...

I detailed earlier how I performed the same mod. I have noticed an increased temperature and a shorter battery life, but the mod coincided with Mountain Lion upgrade so I can't pinpoint the cause of the issues.

P.S. use a fan control program to help with the higher temperatures, although it will exacerbate your battery problem.

Hi there,

Do you have found a sollution for this problem?

I have the same model MBP 8,2 and i am trying to install Fusion Drive.

But now i've got the same troubles as you described.

Hai

Hi there,

I found the solution for my problem.

In the last step of creating the Fusion Drive you have to type the 'lvgUUID' in the Terminal-command.

The machine generates the number in the first step, when you are creating the Logical Volume Group.

But don't forget to put the number between ' ' .

Without the ' ' the machine don't know what to do and you don't know why 🙂.

I really thanks Techsupport from Other World Computing (OWC); they found the solution for my problem!

Hai