does macOS High Sierra work with fusion drive?

macOS Sierra will install as HFS+ on your Fusion drive, and preforms trouble free as indicated above.

Support for APFS on Fusion drives is in the works and coming, but not publicly available at this time.

Prepare for APFS in macOS High Sierra - Apple Support

macOS High Sierra - Technical Specifications

But note this restrictionrelated to APFS stated in the link:

"Apple File System

Requires a Mac with all-flash internal storage."

I find it hard to believe that in a third update to a new OS that something as major as working "correctly" with as many iMacs that have been sold and that are still being sold with Fusion drives that this is not a top priority on the things that need to be solved/corrected. Sure we have emojis that have facial recognition (cute) but when it come to having a computer that you purchased to do a higher level of computing you would think that Apple would have had an answer for this problem by now. I hate to say it but, I have a feeling that if Steve was still around, I don't think that we would have this problem or as many of the current OS problems getting out to the public. If the user experience in the retail stores is top priority having the installed base being able to use their product to the fullest should also be at the top. That is how we can keep the the number of people who support the products happy. One of the first rules in retail.

The processing time for rendering 3D objects or high end architectural renderings increased substantially even with all application software and plugins updated to the latest versions.

I'm running a iMac (27-inch, Late 2013) with

3.5 GHz Intel Core i7,

32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 and

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB.

with a 3TB Fusion Drive

Yes, High Sierra runs but because of caching and file structure it does not preform as quickly as Sierra does. I have all programs and OS files on the Fusion drive and all data files on a WD Black 4TB external on the USB connection. If anything I feel that the latest OS+ update should run faster than the older version OS. They always have in the past.

etcom wrote:

Yes, High Sierra runs but because of caching and file structure it does not preform as quickly as Sierra does.

The caching and file structure on Fusion drives is the same with Sierra and High Sierra. As far as every version of macOS being faster than the previous version, that's not always the case. I don't know if the software you are running is optimized for Metal 2 or not which was introduced with High Sierra.

I don't notice a performance difference one way or the other compared to Sierra.

When I installed High Sierra on my iMac back on Oct. 3rd it loaded and when the system restarted had a bog circle with a line thru it. Called Apple Care and they sent a tech to replace my fusion drive. After tech installed the rive downloaded High Sierra and rebooted it acted exactly as it had with the old fusion drive. Have been running Sierra ever since waiting for the upgrade fix so I can run High Sierra. Get a notice to upgrade weekly but the last line of the info stated only works on digital drives not Fusion

littleclown wrote:

Get a notice to upgrade weekly but the last line of the info stated only works on digital drives not Fusion

High Sierra does not support APFS on Fusion drives at this time. However, it runs on Fusion drives without any problems. I've been running High Sierra on iMacs with Fusion drives since before the initial public release.

Yes if you are capable of reformatting the drive it will run but if you cannot it will bomb when it tries to restart the computer after the update. I have tried on three occasions to reinstall on my unit and have had to reinstall from a time capsule backup to Sierra to get the machine to run. I am not comfortable with the suggestion to reformat the drive and then only pick the stuff you want on your machine from your time capsule. Might lose too much stuff in the transfer. That is why I will continue to wait for the fix and hope it works so I can just after install just copy everything from my time capsule and be good as gold.

Thank you for that information.. As far as what happened...I installed High Sierra on release day. it ran for 5 days great until I was told it had and update.. installed update and then during reboot it came up with a circle with a line thru it at start up.. Did that 3 times with apple care on phone so they said it was a bad hard drive sent tech to install new one.. three days later with new drive installed tech downloaded fresh install and it did exactly the same circle so we went back to Sierra ever since.

Yes it's true but it works just fine on Fusion drives. APFS will be supported on Fusion drives in a future release.

Yes, it's true.... It's the APFS / Fusion Drive combination that it is not compatible with.... must reformat your drive in order to remove APFS.

Kinda bad planning on Apple's part IMHO.... :-(

Hi, I totally agree with the bad planning on Apple's part.

But has anyone heard anything about this mystical future release (sounds like Microsoft promises to me)?

😟

William

Nothing "mystical" about it. It will be ready when it's ready. 😎

What problem do you think you have? High Sierra works with your drive. Just because it does not change the file system does not mean it doesn't work. It just means it does not change the file system.