Fusion drive questions

I recently purchased a Mac Pro and would like to make a fusion drive with the TB drive that it came with. I already have a 200g SSD and am wondering if I would be able to utilize the full 200g SSD. From my understanding of the Fusion drive it appears to be like a raid drive, but using the speed of the SSD drive. Would it be more logical to get a smaller SSD drive and use the other elsewhere since the size of the drive is not dependent on the speed.

If you are running 10.8.2 or later, you can combine an SSD with a rotating drive to get a fusion drive. It may take a few lines of Terminal code to "make it go".
This fusion drive will have some of the speed advantages of an SSD, and some of the size advantages of a rotating drive. This is especially helpful in a Mac that is limited to very few drives and 5400RPM drives, since the speedup is more profound in that case.
In a Mac Pro, you may be better off with multiple drives for different purposes. Establishing a separate Boot Drive gives a remarkable speedup, and putting the Boot Drive on a low-latency SSD provides an additional incremental speedup.
Mac Pro tends to be hobbled not just by drive speed, but by not being able to read and write multiple drives at once (because Users do not install enough drives and dedicate them to separate, non-overlapping functions).

Similar Messages

Fusion drive upgrade question (7200rpm?+SSD swap)

If I choose the fusion drive upgrade while purchasing a mac mini, will the non SSD drive be upgraded to a 7200rpm drive as well?
Also, I would love to replace the SSD of the fusion drive with a 3rd party 256 SSD that I already own, if that's even possible.
Or should I just stick w/the stock TB drive and install my 256SSD with a data doubler kit from OWC or something like that to save me some $$$?

"If I choose the fusion drive upgrade while purchasing a mac mini, will the non SSD drive be upgraded to a 7200rpm drive as well?"
No. The hard drive component of the Fusion Drive spins at 5400rpm.
"Also, I would love to replace the SSD of the fusion drive with a 3rd party 256 SSD that I already own, if that's even possible."
It's possible. No point in upgrading to the Fusion Drive if you're going to do that, though. Read here:
http://blog.macsales.com/15617-creating-your-own-fusion-drive

Question to Fusion Drive iMacs users

I've got the new Retina iMac for over 3 wseks and I have some issues with it. Can somebody with any iMac with Fusion Drive send me here on forum a photo of Boot Manager (hold left alt key (or option key) during startup of your mac) and a photo of Disk Uttility.
Thanks!,
107MP

could be that I'm wrong
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4634055?tstart=0

Programs repeatedly crashing on my late 2012 Mac Mini Fusion Drive

I have a late 2012 Mac Mini Fusion Drive 2.6ghz, 16gig RAM running Mac OSX 10.9.4 . For the past week or so I have had a number of programs - both Apple and third party apps crash repeatedly, I have repaired permissions and restarted numerous times but nothing seems to fix it. For example Mail would crash each time I cancelled a password being accepted by Mail in a particular account, Safari has crashed for various reasons. Apple Motion has also crashed more times in the past day or so than it ever has in the past year. It's crashing when I try to add a point or node to a line in an animation I'm finishing.
Does anybody have any idea why this is happening now and does anybody know how to fix it?

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
For this step, the title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the name of the crashed application or process. For example, if iTunes crashed, you would enter "iTunes" (without the quotes.)
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Select the messages from the time of the last crash, if any. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
In the Console window, select
          DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION ▹ User Diagnostic Reports
(not Diagnostic and Usage Messages) from the log list on the left. There is a disclosure triangle to the left of the list item. If the triangle is pointing to the right, click it so that it points down. You'll see a list of crash reports. The name of each report starts with the name of the process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report related to the process in question. The contents of the report will appear on the right. Use copy and paste to post the entire contents—the text, not a screenshot.
I know the report is long, maybe several hundred lines. Please post all of it anyway.
If you don't see any reports listed, but you know there was a crash, you may have chosen Diagnostic and Usage Messages from the log list. Choose DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION instead.
In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)
Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report—they're very long and rarely helpful.

DIY Fusion drive with elgato, eyetv 3

I've got the imac 27" 2011, and I have set up a fusion drive and generally I have no issues with it.
However when watching TV (a waste of an imac i know) with elgato eyetv, it pauses every so often. Generally if you listen during this its because the main drive as reving up as its gone to sleep, I know in the system preferences I can tell it not to spin down, but that will cause the drive to eventually fail.
My questions are really to those who have a fusion drive (from the apple directly as a preinstalled build) if anyone else is running the elgato eyeTV 3 and experience anything similar?
Or to everyone else can the Fusion drive be altered so that the live TV stream gets written to the main Hard drive rather than to the SSD?
Any thoughts?

The drive will fail no matter what you do with it. That is the fact of hard drives and drives in general.
So stop putting it to sleep and stop the waiting.
No it can't be altered as that is what a Fusion drive is. The System determines what data gets written to each drive not the user. If you want to make that choice then you should not be using a Fusion drive setup.
Also with ANY Fusion drive When, Not If, Either drive Fails they both fail and you are left with Nothing. Kind of like RAID 0 (Zero).
I personally would never use a Fusion drive setup. Better to have a slightly bigger SSD and a secondary spinning drive to store data on. Like moving your "i" tunes, photo and other User/library files, Doc and Downloads, to the spinner and leaving the SSD for the OS and programs.

DIY Fusion drive not working after Mavericks install

Hi Everyone,
I had setup a DIY fusion drive on my iMac 27" Mid 2011 - installing a Samsung SSD and a new 1TB drive. Everything was working swimmingly in Mountain Lion but as soon as I upgraded to Mavericks - everything slowed down.
In speed test I get an average write speed of 70 MB/s and a read of about 100MB/s...
Did I do something wrong? I installed Mavericks via the App Store.
Thanks.
Martin

Did you ever figure this out? I have a similar experience (read below) and wanted to know if anything you learned helped?
Hi all. I have a 3.2GHz i5 w 24 GB of Ram. Purchased in January 2014.
My good friend helped me install a DIY Fusion. I purchased a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD and he did the work to "fuse" it with the regular 1TB HD the iMac came with. It is attached via USB 3.0 in an OWC case.
Originally, after being set up - Black Magic Speed tests benched it at 250-350 write and 500-650 read. I'm not a techie, but spent enough time to know that is pretty smoking and well above a typical disk hard drive.
Well, now it is down to 70-80 write and 180-250 read. The imac still boots in less than 25 seconds, so I don't feel the system is slow. (and it certainly blazes next to the first generation aluminum iMac I had before - a 2008 model). But I am concerned at deterioration of speed and really thought the extra investment would have led to faster sustained speeds.
So my questions are:
* Does anybody have any ideas why this is happening?
* Any idea what the fix is? I'm hoping not to have to start over.
* Any ideas whether it would have been better just to keep the 256 a boot drive for OS & apps, and leave the 1TB for media? I almost did this and wonder if it would have simplified things or led to better performance.
* Any idea where to go from here?
BTW, I know a little about TRIM, but I think my friend said the Samsung will handle that itself.
Lastly, you can probably tell I know a bit ABOUT this stuff, but not much on HOW to do it. So regular maintenance and upkeep is not my strong suit.
Thanks in advance for comments & suggestions.
Jake

Mac Fusion drive: The disk "Macintosh HD" could not be unmounted

Hi
I recently purchased a Mac Mini with the fusion drive. When I perform a verify and repair of the disk, I get the error "The disk Macintosh HD could not be unmounted". This does not occur with any of my other computers, imac or powermac (also running mountain lion). So I am wondering if I have a defective Fusion/HD or if this is simply a peculiarity of the fusion drive itself. Please comment.

If your Fusion drive can be repaired with Disk Utility, it will be shown with red lettering. If you are not seeing red lettering, then you need to boot into Recovery mode to use that Disk Utility. When you order a Fusion drive equipped Mac, there is a special version of Disk Utility included in OS X specifically for operation with Fusion Drives.
If you have any open files on the volume you wish to verify/repair, then Disk Utility will throw its hands up and give you that cannot unmount drive message. Make sure you have quit all applications you were using that may be accessing files on the disk in question.
Apple article.

Fusion Drive - HDD spins up often

Hi,
I am currently using Fusion Drive and all seems to be working fine.
The only thing I could remark on at the moment is that the HDD is being turned on and off very often by Fusion Drive. Sometimes, it even stalls the computer, until the HDD is fully spun-up. I'm a little worried that all the start / stop cycles will eventually weaken and damage the HDD.
The question is: can Fusion Drive be tweaked (terminal ?) ?
The configuration is
1x 128 GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD:
1x 500 Gb Western Digital Blue drive
Thank's all.

From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Energy Saver ▹ Power Adapter
and uncheck the box labeled Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible, if it's checked.

Fusion Drive & Swap files

From time to time on my new Mac Mini with 1 TB Fusion Drive, I am getting the following error: "Your Mac OS X startup disk has no more space available for application memory."
This would indicate an issue with being able to write swap files/virtual memory. If I understand how the Fusion Drive works, the virtual memory is stored on the 128 GB SSD portion. The SSD is full, considering I have 650 GB free on the 1.128 TB Fusion Drive.
Seems like a CoreStorage issue, as it's apparently not leaving enough space on the SSD for the swap files after the computer has been run for a while. I have 16 GB RAM in the Mini.
Restarting the computer solves the issue, although I often use the Mini in remote sessions and when this error comes up, performance on the Mini tends to be so sluggish that sometimes remote connections time out or drop, making it hard to even be able to restart the computer.

Your problem is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory.
That can happen for two reasons:
You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or
You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.
Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination. In Activity Monitor, select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select
View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory
from the menu bar.
If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more memory over time without ever releasing it.
If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.
The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:
sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total
where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details:
Memory Usage Performance Guidelines: About the Virtual Memory System

5k iMac i7 3 tera fusion 4 gig video fusion drive won't reformat help

MMy bto 5k shipped from China sunday night and arrived in Maine this morning.... Amazing when you think about it for a bto
iinstallation and set up we're going fine and I started up boot camp assistant to crate a temp boot camp while I wait for my thunder bay 4 box to take the drives for my old Mac pro when boot camp will have a1 tera SSD all to itself....
so carved off a 700 gig boot camp partition which the assistant formatted fat I then plugged is the lighting to FW adapter in a LaCie 2 tera fw 800 drive to act as a bridge to my LaCie DVD burner which uses the old fw400 cables and inserted my new shrink wrap win 8.1 retail 64 DVDs and up comes the win 8 install in very tiny type in a tiny window which got a bit of a laugh out of me.
And I go through it to the point of selecting that boot camp partition and then said it could not use a fat partition and I should reformat it from the win 8.1 installer which I did and then it said it could not use and unknown partition so I said great and booted back to 10-10 and the boot camp tool to put things back and it said it could not I then went to disk tools and it also said the 3tera fusion could not be either reformatted or put back to a single partition I was on with tech support where I went up through 4 levels of support due to the 5k bto which most had no knowledge of. We tried the optioncommand r to get to DT and the same problem as did going to reinstall from the net which after a 30 min down load could not reformat either it is now kicked to Cupertino with a call back tomorrow
am betting it will take a Unix comand line to reformat but be aware there may be boot camp issues with my configuration
and any help here will be great fully received
here is the config my extra 16 gig ram and Thunder Bay 4 thunderbolt box from OWC are not yet here
27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display
$3,349.00
With the following configuration:
4.0GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x8GB
3TB Fusion Drive
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB GDDR5
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
Accessory Kit

Try booting into Internet recovery mode, ⌘⌥R, launch Disk Utility to erase the HD. If successful, reinstall the OS. If not, then return it (14 days with no questions asked) and get another machine. Apple sells it and they should know how to fix it.
27" i7 iMac (Mid 2011) refurb, OS X Yo (10.10), Mavs, ML & SL, G4 450 MP w/10.5 & 9.2.2

How to Repartition 3TB Fusion Drive?

Hi, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon of my iMac, which has a 3TB fusion drive. The phenomenon is that the fusion drive has a 2.2 TB + 800GB partitions. I understand fusion drive is actually a 128GB flash drive plus a 2.87GB hard drive. Then why is the fusion drive divided into a 2.2 TB and a 800 GB partitions?
Anyways, that was just my curiosity. I have a practical question. I am trying to install Windows 8.1 on this iMac to do some development/environment testing works. I realized when I use Boot Camp 5.1, it will not let me install Windows 8.1 successfully. The error is when I head to Windows installation, formatted the Boot Camp partition to NTFS (or simply just format it), it will keep telling me:
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed GPT disks"
I then tried making a USB bootable disk through UNetBootin. It tells me the same thing. I don't have a CD or DVD drive on my iMac, so I cannot try burning a DVD. So then I started my research about this error.
And it seems to be a common error based on my research. The solution is that I should remove the bootcamp partition from Boot Camp Assistant and then use the Disk Utility to create a new partition for Windows. I did the first part, but then I head to the Disk Utility, it says:
"The full size of the Fusion Drive is not available for repartitioning."
I restarted the computer, and it tells me the same message.
Now I guess I have two questions, answering either one can help me through my goal.
1. How to create partitions on a 3TB fusion drive?
2. How to install Windows 8.1 on a Boot Camp partition?

Hey I meant to answer my own question! Thanks for reminding me.
A good reference link is on Super User where some other users already answered methods for Macbook Pro. Here is the link:
http://superuser.com/questions/481650/cant-use-bootcamp-partition-for-windows-8- installation/846439#846439
I am going to copy my reply from the thread. Here we go:
I was stuck with this challenge last night as well. After 10 hours, I finally have resolved this. As it turns out, not all OSX are the same. For example, I have Macbook Pro Retina, iMac, and Mac Pro. ClaitonLovatoJr's solution works on Macbook Pro Retina but not iMac or Mac Pro.
Here is why:
iMac (2014) and Mac Pro (2014) have different types of hard-drive. So far I haven't gotten Mac Pro to work, because it has the most particular type of hard-drive, perhaps Windows simply does not support. But again, I haven't tried for very long.
On iMac, here is how you can get Windows 8.1 (Professional) to install.
Since late 2012, iMac have fusion drive, which means its hard-drive is combined with SSD and traditional hard-drive. As a result, Apple has an interesting way to manage it. I am not going to the details. In short, EFI would not work with the hardware, so we must go through Apple's Boot Camp.
The first thing to do is to find a USB flash drive. Many people including me failed because we try to use SD card. This won't work because SD card is too advance for what we are doing. It will load the install program, but after loading it becomes all Windows, and then it will fail the installation. So what we need is an old fashion flash drive. I tried using SD card adapter, it failed too. It might have something to do with the type of adapter I have. But to be safe, we should USE FLASH DRIVE.
Then we will create an installation stick with Boot Camp Assistant. Be sure to use the latest 5.1 version. And we must check downloading from Apple, because it will give you drivers you need to complete the installation. If downloading failed for some reason, we can download the files here:
http://supportdownload.apple.com/download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Appl e_Software_Updates/Mac_OS_X/downloads/031-3384.20140211.Xcc3e/BootCamp5.1.5621.z ip
And then manually place the files to the installation disk.
I suggest not to check install just yet, in case you need to manually place the file.
Now we can finally use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows. We must use it because Boot Camp is the only application that can create usable disk space for the installation. Disk Utility or other type of applications will not work. Apple has a very specific design for the hybrid EFI-MBR system for iMac's fusion drive.
Then the computer should restart, and very likely to stuck in black screen. Don't panic, this is because there is a bug in Apple's Boot Camp loading system. The wait time is too short, if you have many devices connected it will not load correctly. We can power off the computer by holding the power button and then power up while holding option key.
Now we cannot choose EFI-Windows when booting up, we must choose Windows. EFI is faster and more advance, but we cannot use it.
Now we should be able to boot into the installation interface, a very lowres one. If you see a highres interface it means it went to the EFI. Power down and try again. If you don't see the lowres interface, something went wrong. Boot into OSX and remove Windows through Boot Camp Assistant (actually just to kill the new partition), and then redo everything.
If you are in lowres interface, it's not all done yet. You still need to format the new partition, either just by clicking on format or using command center. Now you should be able to install!
After installation we can set up Windows, but it will die and reboot. Don't panic, because iMac is not design for Windows. Windows thought it had some hardware failure. And then we will be able to login after rebooting, but it will stuck for a long period of time - like 20 to 30 minutes. This is because it needs to download and set up some drivers for the odd environment it encountered. Finally, we will see pop up to encourage us to install Boot Camp on Windows. We don't have to. We can always use option key went starting the computer. But it's up to you.
When shutting down Windows sometime it will fail and give you errors, this is because Windows ultimately does not work with Apple's driver very well (fusion drive or other hardware). No worry, just power down by holding the power button.
Hopefully this help!

Can I partition a 3tb fusion drive on a 2014 imac27", with boot camp, to let me install windows 7?

I have used boot camp to create a partition for Windows 7 on 3 earlier Macs (iMac 24" 2007 / Mac Pro 2009 / Macbook Pro 2009) as well as a recent Macbook Air 2012.
My main reason for this is to use Sage Account/Payroll, and also a couple of other Windows-specific programs.
I have just replaced the old iMac with a new iMac27", with a 3tb fusion drive, and want to partition it to install a new oem copy of Win 7 sp1.
However, I found an article on this (link: http://twocanoes.com/winclone/support/installing-windows-on-a-boot-camp-partitio n-on-a-3-tb-fusion-drive) implying this might not currently be officially supported by Apple & boot camp assistant, and providing a workaround procedure to create 3 partitions. The article begins with this note: "Important Note: This help document is for reference only, superceded by updates to OS X that include support for 3TB drives and Fusion drive in Boot Camp Assistant. Use Boot Camp Assistant to create the Boot Camp partition."
I have two questions:
1 - Can anyone advise if updates have now been made, to provide this support for partitioning the 3tb fusion drive?....and if not, is this likely to change soon?
2 - If this is still not officially supported, can anyone advise if they have successfully created a Windows partition on the 3tb fusion drive & installed Win 7?
Thanks in advance.

Based on Apple's knowledge base. this configuration is supported for Windows 7 x64 and 8 using Mountain Lion 108.3 or higher. Simply use BootCamp Assistant to set it up.
See here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5639?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
and here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4441
For your application, you might also consider virtualization software like VMWare Fusion or Parallels.
I use both BootCamp and VMWare Fusion. Fusion is much easier to install, more flxible, runs at the same time as your Mac applications etc. For typical applications, there is no notable performance degradation.
If you need high performance graphics for gaming, BootCamp is still the best way to go. For all other applications, I prefer VMWare.

Windows 8.1 on 3TB Fusion drive

Hello,
i want to install Windows 8.1 on 3TB Fusion drive iMac 27 Late 2013. I intended once but have only problems. I have a 64 bit version of Windows 8.1 on a USB 2.0 Stick and run Bootcamp. At the weekend I want to intend one more time, after a crash of the Fusion Drive and reinstall of Yosemite, but my question is if it will work on my system? I have found some comments on the web that its very difficult to install Windows 8.1 on a 3TB Fusion Drive.
You have some suggestions I have to do?
This time I will reconnect all USB devices and put only the USB Flash direct into the Mac.

Hello,
i want to install Windows 8.1 on 3TB Fusion drive iMac 27 Late 2013. I intended once but have only problems. I have a 64 bit version of Windows 8.1 on a USB 2.0 Stick and run Bootcamp. At the weekend I want to intend one more time, after a crash of the Fusion Drive and reinstall of Yosemite, but my question is if it will work on my system? I have found some comments on the web that its very difficult to install Windows 8.1 on a 3TB Fusion Drive.
You have some suggestions I have to do?
This time I will reconnect all USB devices and put only the USB Flash direct into the Mac.

Creating my own Fusion Drive: Do I need to buy Mountain Lion from the app store to reinstall the OS? Do I lose the iLife apps?

I just bought a Mac Mini (late 2012) with a 1TB HDD and I'm planning to install a second drive, an SSD (Samsung 840 evo) and create the Fusion Drive, and I have a couple of questions:
1- I've read lots of articles on how to do this but I'm not sure if I have to buy Mountain Lion from the app store (to reinstall the OS after I install the second drive) since I'm not able to see it on the "Purchased" list of apps, or if I can just reinstall OS X with OS X Utilities.
2- I read somewhere that if I make my own Fusion Drive when I reinstall OS X I will lose iLife, is this true? Or will I be able to redownload it from the store? I really don't want to lose iMovie, iPhoto and GarageBand and I'm confused about it.
Thanks in advance for any help and information you can give me!

Thankyou very much lllaass, that's exactly what I wanted to be sure about!

Is it possible to partition a 3TB fusion drive?

Hi, i'm a bit of a noob when it comes to the new technology. I searched for the answer, but it didnt quite answer my question.
I have new iMac with a 3TB fusion drive. I would like to create a small *backup* partition where i can create an installer version of mavericks so when i do a clean install, i can select that drive from the bootable disk selection menu and it runs the mavericks installer from that partition, rather than a USB thumb drive. I looked at the recovery mode option however it appears to download a new 5gb installer of mavericks instead of using an already downloaded version of mavericks (updated version).
I dont want to split the SSD/HDD components of the fusion drive so they are seperate, i just want to add a small partition to be partitioned as a mavericks installer drive.
I hope someone can answer if this can work. Thanks in advance

Yes, you can do this. You can partition the drive using Boot Camp Assistant. Then instead of installing Windows, quit the Boot Camp Assistant and then use Disk Utility to reformat the BootCamp partition to Mac OS X Extended.
After you do this, you will have to install Mavericks on the drive. Then after Mavericks is installed, you can then copy the installer over to it. I would also recommend that if you have DiskWarrior, Drive Genius, or TechTool to install them on that partition as well.

Fusion drive questions

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