Luke Christian
Level 1 (25 points)

Q: 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

by keg55,Solvedanswer
keg55 keg55
Level 6 (8,514 points)
Mac OS X
A:

You don't need to use Terminal commands with OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and above (which includes OS X Mavericks). You can create your Fusion drive by restarting into the Recovery HD (Command+R). Then launch Disk Utility. You will see both drives marked in RED lettering and a popup will display giving you an option IGNORE or FIX. Clicking FIX will erase both drives and automatically create a Fusion drive. So, do a full system back up before creating a Fusion drive.

 

In case you want to use the SSD and HDD separately, know that in Disk Utility from the Recovery HD in OS X Mountain Lion there's a bug with the IGNORE/FIX buttons. The IGNORE will do nothing and won't let you individually manage each drive. You would have to use Terminal (diskutil) to manage them. In OS X Mavericks, that bug has been fixed and clicking IGNORE will change the RED lettering to black and let you manage each drive separately.

 

TRIM aids in the reduction of write amplification and some improved performance. A 3rd party free app called Trim Enabler will enable OS X's TRIM feature on 3rd party SSD drives.

 

This produces three key benefits: 

  1. Lower write amplification. Less data is re-written and more free space is available during GC (more space to write equals fewer writes needed);
  2. Higher throughput. With the TRIM command, there is less data to move during GC and the drive runs faster. Throughput is bottlenecked at the flash an SSD is only as fast as it can write to the flash memory. During the time it is doing GC, the drive has to stop some of the data transfer from the host while it moves data around. This is why it’s beneficial for the SSD to know which data is invalid so it doesn’t have to be moved during GC.
  3. Improved endurance, because the drive is writing less to the flash by not rewriting invalid data

 

I had a Fusion drive in my late-2012 Mac Mini (120GB SSD, 500GB HDD) and there was a definite performance improvement. I think it booted up in ~16 seconds compared to ~ 30 seconds without it and apps launched much faster. I've since "defused" the drives and have separate drives. Just a preference for me, but I didn't have any issues with a Fusion drive and I enjoyed the ease of file management which was done for me by Core Storage. I didn't enable TRIM on my 120GB SSD since I rarely do any deleting of files. Most files are deleted off my HDD which is used for LAN file storage. So the built-in Garbage Collection on my SSD is good enough.

Posted on Jan 23, 2014 6:03 AM

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Luke Christian

Q: Create Fusion Drive for Mac Mini?

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  • by robinotter,

    robinotter robinotter Jul 25, 2014 3:13 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (0 points)
    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

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass Jul 25, 2014 3:14 AM in response to robinotter
    Level 10 (190,769 points)
    Apple Watch
    Jul 25, 2014 3:14 AM in response to robinotter

    Can you post a screen shot of what yo see in Disk Utility?

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Jul 25, 2014 3:49 AM in response to drmcvinney
    Level 6 (10,536 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 25, 2014 3:49 AM in response to drmcvinney

    I just now saw your post.

    If there is no compelling reason to use a fusion drive (I do not know one), and you are willing or planning to do a clean Mavericks install, why not install the "standard" system: OS Mavericks on the SSD, and use the HDD for music/movie libraries. The disadvantage of fusion is, among other disadvantages, that there is more disk writing than necessary, shortening the ssd life and slowing down the ssd. Also it can be counterproductive for some complicated applications.

  • by robinotter,

    robinotter robinotter Jul 25, 2014 3:55 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 25, 2014 3:55 AM in response to lllaass

    Yes, here is the screenshot:

     

    Screen Shot 2014-07-25 at 11.50.28.png

  • by hamdicarlo,

    hamdicarlo hamdicarlo Aug 22, 2014 2:55 AM in response to robinotter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 22, 2014 2:55 AM in response to robinotter

    Hi

     

    i have the same issue with my mac mini 2011

    did you mange to find a way around this?

  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 Aug 22, 2014 9:25 AM in response to hamdicarlo
    Level 6 (8,514 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 22, 2014 9:25 AM in response to hamdicarlo

    Are you using the internal Recovery HD for ML 10.8.3 or above (Mavericks)?

  • by hamdicarlo,

    hamdicarlo hamdicarlo Aug 22, 2014 10:34 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 22, 2014 10:34 AM in response to keg55

    I initially i installed a fresh copy of mavericks on SSD (externally connected), later i did create Mavericks recovery USB and booted from it.

     

    Accessing disk utility i managed to locate both HHD and SSD, but couldn't format SSD until i swapped drive bays (SSD on top where HHD originally was, and HHD on bottom tray)

     

    Disk utility later allowed me to format SSD but both drives appear without "fix/ignore" option.

    I gave up and did the process via terminal commands.

     

    Currently and as i am typing this email, my mac works good based on the terminal fusion setup, however, i cannot confirm if i might face an issue or not.

    I am planning on installing Trim Enabler to ensuring nothing goes wrong.

     

    Considering your knowledge; do you think i would be ok with terminal command fusion setup that i did, or do you recommend another way/method?

     

    Many thanks for your reply

  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 Aug 22, 2014 10:45 AM in response to hamdicarlo
    Level 6 (8,514 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 22, 2014 10:45 AM in response to hamdicarlo

    Whether you use the Terminal commands to create a Fusion drive or the Recovery HD GUI of DU to do it, you should be fine. I've done it both ways and it's the same. The one thing I did when using the Terminal commands was install OS X on the HDD; then restarted into its Recovery HD to do the Terminal commands for creating my Fusion drive. This way, I ensured that I had a Recovery HD accessible from the Fusion drive which is ONLY accessible by pressing Command+R at restart. Other than that, it all worked fin.

     

    I mentioned the internal drive's Recovery HD because I've always just booted to it from the Alt/Option key and selecting it to do the Terminal commands. I can't remember if I ever used an external Recovery HD.

     

    So I understand your bays with your drives, the UPPER bay is the one closest to the top of the Mac Mini. The LOWER bay is the one closest to the round cover that you have to take off to get inside the Mac Mini.

  • by hamdicarlo,

    hamdicarlo hamdicarlo Aug 22, 2014 11:00 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 22, 2014 11:00 AM in response to keg55

    I don't think that i have used the internal HD recovery previously since this is my first (technically format) of my Mac mini in 3 years.

     

    considering that my Mac mini will be stationed on my desk, i could always prepare a bootable USB drive on my MBP should i need to deal with any issues.

     

    Many thanks for the information

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Aug 22, 2014 12:33 PM in response to hamdicarlo
    Level 6 (10,536 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 22, 2014 12:33 PM in response to hamdicarlo

    As I said:

    If there is no compelling reason to use a fusion drive (I do not know one), and you are willing or planning to do a clean Mavericks install, why not install the "standard" system.

    I am not in favour of FusionDrive,

    If you install Trim now, be aware that Yosimite  does not allow kext manipulation.

  • by crimp,Helpful

    crimp crimp Sep 28, 2014 5:08 PM in response to Lexiepex
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 28, 2014 5:08 PM in response to Lexiepex

    LexSchellings conclusion against Fusion Drives is misguided.   And he hasn't really explained why not to use one.

     

    He advises to just install the OS on the SSD and data on the HD, and manage it yourself....that's the very management issue the Fusion Drive setup intends to remove.   I think he misunderstands that most people, especially mac users don't want to get involved with where their data is.

     

    There's also hypocrisy in his statements about SSD cost, lifetime and best usage practices. 

     

    Also, always writing to the SSD might actually be what you want.

     

    I spent quite some time monitoring my Fusion Drive when I first set it up, and it does just work.   The data does get moved around.   And I can concentrate on using the computer for productive purposes instead of managing it.

     

    Obviously though, as always, make sure you backup, as if one disk dies, the lot is gone without expensive recovery

  • by Allan Eckert,

    Allan Eckert Allan Eckert Sep 28, 2014 5:24 PM in response to crimp
    Level 9 (54,085 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 28, 2014 5:24 PM in response to crimp

    Thanks Crimp.

     

    I concur with your evaluation of the Fusion Drive or tiered logical volume as it is known in the server support industry. Having use them for years for exactly the reasons you stated, I found them to be a very nice addition to my Mac. The performance of the Fusion Drive has extended the life of my Mac.

     

    I have tested it on occasion and so far have not been able to see any degradation at the time of my last test.

  • by Jonathan Brown,

    Jonathan Brown Jonathan Brown Dec 10, 2014 9:39 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Dec 10, 2014 9:39 AM in response to keg55

    keg55, will your instructions likewise apply under Yosemite? I'm considering adding a 120GB OWC Mercury SSD to the 500GB spinning drive via the OWC Data Doubler. OWC is Mac-centric, and their drives may be closest to Apple's OEM spec, so they're unlikely to run into TRIM issues, from what I've read. If you can spare the time, could you please let me know about Yosemite and perhaps even in a reply consolidate your advice about creating a fusion drive? It would be a huge help.

  • by Soundwire,

    Soundwire Soundwire Dec 30, 2014 7:24 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2014 7:24 AM in response to keg55

    This is wonderful, can i use the same method on my macbook pro 2011? Or is this only exclusive for Mac Mini? The "fix it"

    I want to create a fusion drive without going into terminal.

     

    If this works, seems so much easier. Iam waiting for my Optical drive bay to come so i can create the fusion drive with 850 SSD 256 samsung, i hope this works.

  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 Dec 30, 2014 9:37 AM in response to Soundwire
    Level 6 (8,514 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 30, 2014 9:37 AM in response to Soundwire

    Should work, yes. I've only created a Fusion drive on Mac Minis but some folks I know created them on Macbook Pros also.

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