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Create Fusion Drive for Mac Mini?

With the falling prices of SSDs, I am fascinated by the prospect of adding one to my Late-2012 quad-core i7 Mac mini and set it up as a single Fusion Drive volume with the existing 1TB HDD.

The clunky 5,400rpm HDD that it came with is laboriously slow and the opportuity to add a 256GB SSD (probably a Sandisk?), for a lot less than the incremental price hike of having specified a 128GB Fusion Drive in the first place, seems very tempting. Better still, it was mentioned, in another thread, that Disk Utility in later Mac Minis automatically set-up two installed drives as a single Fusion Drive volume, so I would not even have to delve into the dark arts of the Terminal to set it up, just pick-up a disk doubler kit from iFixit or OWC, drop in the SSD, load OS 10.9 onto the SSD, boot into Disk Utilities, select 'Repair Disk' then go and make a cup of tea!

Even though I might have to forfeit my remaining 6 months of Applecare, it seems like a compelling way to vastly improve my Mac mini's disappointingly sluggish performance. I always back-up to Time Machine so am not overly concerned about doubling the risk of data loss with a Fusion set-up.

It all seems too alluring... am I missing something?

Can someone temper my enthusiasm before I bite off more than I can chew with a perfectly good 6-month-old Mac mini?

Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9), rMBP, 2x 24" LG monitors.

Posted on Jan 22, 2014 11:25 AM

Best reply

Allan Eckert

Level 9

79,512 points

Posted on Jan 22, 2014 11:36 AM

I created one in my Mac Pro and it really improved the performance for me

For some insight on how to do it here is the site I used to make mine.

http://blog.macsales.com/15617-creating-your-own-fusion-drive

It does include directions for the Mac Mini

Good luck

I created mine with a 120 GB Accelsior PCIe SSD card and a 1 TB disk. I was able to move the vast majority of my files in addition to my system and applications to the Fusion Drive.

Allan

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68 replies

phe2

Level 1

0 points

May 16, 2014 8:39 AM in response to MCMLVIII

How much did the Apple reseller charge you for the installation?

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 16, 2014 8:41 AM in response to MCMLVIII

Yes, always install a new SSD in the slot of the original startup disk, as is said here numerous times in other threads.

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,707 points

May 16, 2014 10:27 AM in response to MCMLVIII

I believe the 2012 Macs are the ones that need to SSD installed in the bottom position. Perhaps earlier models (before Fusion) could be in either.

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 16, 2014 11:47 AM in response to tbirdvet

IMHO the FusionDrive OS should be avoided, difficult and only transition.

MCMLVIII

Level 1

0 points

May 17, 2014 1:22 AM in response to phe2

$50 for the installation + $30 for the SATA ribbon cable. They never did do a proper installation, even after 3 attempts - on each occasion the computer came back either damaged, not working, or both. After the third attempt, with a dead computer on my hands with internals looking like a dog had been chewing on it, they agreed to replace it with an upgraded 2.6GHZ model which I am now waiting to arrive. Needless to say, I'll be doing the SSD install and HDD relocation myself..... with help from iFixit of course

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 17, 2014 2:03 AM in response to tbirdvet

Again I advise strongly against Fusion: the FusionDrive OS should be avoided, difficult and only transition.

May 18, 2014 2:59 PM in response to Lexiepex

Not sure why you keep advising against fusion drive. I have set-up mine using an iFixit drive installation kit and OS X to simply 'repair' the two drives into one fusion drive.

It was very simple to do and has performed perfectly for the past 3 months.

I, personally, would recommend this as an excellent way to combine the speed of SSD with the volume of HDD and leverages the excellent technology already build into the Apple operating system.

The only proviso is that the OS does not enable TRIM technology to work with third-party SSDs (mostly a theoretical benefit), otherwise I can see no reason not to recommend it.

May 18, 2014 3:48 PM in response to Lexiepex

I would really be interested in hearing why you say that Fusion Drives are only a transition.

The concept of the Fusion Drive or as it is know elsewhere the tiered logical volume has been around on servers since the early nineties at least. So while it might be new for Apple, it really is not that new of concept elsewhere.

Also your comment of "difficult" with absolutely nothing to back it up isn't very meaningful. I am currently using a Fusion Drive and have had no problems or "difficulties' with it at all. More information on why you say that woiuld be most welcome.

Allan

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 19, 2014 12:16 AM in response to Luke Christian

I explained enough. If you are happy, go on. I was explaining to birdvet.

Lex

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

May 19, 2014 12:23 AM in response to Allan Eckert

Allan, I am not talking about servers and all that. I am talking about the single mac, not the complicated systems. And since it is cheap to have more than large enough ssd, there is also not a reason for fusiondrive. Look back one two years in this forum and you see what I mean. SSD+HDD size stays the same fusion or not, as soon as the SSD size is above 128GB or even 256GB therre is no reason at all to be exotic. And writing a lot on a SSD is not good for it'sAnd lifetime. I am even not talking about NAS systems because that would be counterproductive also in my opinion, although I am less certain here, I have little experience with NAS and try to avoid it.

Lex

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,707 points

May 19, 2014 3:24 AM in response to Lexiepex

I agree. The Fusion design is just one more thing that can go wrong. Also many note the constant writing between the drives with noise and wear. I have just one 512GB SSD in mine which is more than enough volume for me.

pjclick

Level 1

8 points

Jun 22, 2014 7:52 AM in response to keg55

Will this exact same process work on my mid-2011, 2.7 Core i7 mini, running Mavericks? Thanks...

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Jun 22, 2014 8:00 AM in response to pjclick

If you mean creating a fusion drive the answer is yes.

pjclick wrote:

Will this exact same process work on my mid-2011, 2.7 Core i7 mini, running Mavericks? Thanks...

Jul 2, 2014 8:43 AM in response to Lexiepex

Hey LexSchellings, I bought a used 2010 server Mini with a "fusion drive" and have experienced persistent kernel panic crashes. Meanwhile TechTool says that all is well with everything. The Apple Store in Little Rock says that the fusion drive was incorrectly set up -- they say Mavericks only supports the configuration in 2012 Minis. I let them keep it to run tests which they have been doing for 2 days!!

What is installed is a 500GB HD and a 128GB SSD that shows up as a single drive of 628GB. Before I brought it to the Apple Store my inclination was to wipe the drives and install a clean Mavericks that will hopefully identify the two drives separately and I can work mostly off the SSD , and then dump the idea of fusion drive which may be causing the kernel panics. Reading this thread I can see that you don't like the idea of fusion drives; I thought I would ask this question and see if I'm on the right track.

Jul 25, 2014 3:13 AM in response to keg55

Hi keg55,

i tried to follow your steps to create a fusion drive on my white plastic MacBook after installing a Kingston SSD using a data doubler. However, when is boot into the recovery partition on my thumb drive, the ssd and original HD do not appear red in disk utility, so there is no option to 'fix'. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

Create Fusion Drive for Mac Mini?