Integration of Fusion Drive in standard HDD iMac 2012

Hello. Can I post-install a Fusion Drive into a 2012 iMac (27') which is currently equipped only with a standard 1 TB HDD? Thanks for Your help.

A "Fusion Drive" is the combination of a hard drive and an SSD. As I understand it, there's no provision for retrofitting a second internal storage device. It has to be done at the factory.

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Fusion Drive on a 2010 iMac with 2tb HDD & 256gb SSD

Hi,
well basicailly the title says it all!
I have a 2010 iMac with the 256gb SSD and 2TB HDD which to me seems like it would be great option for the Fusion Drive...
Does anyone have any ideas on how I could make the drives work like the new Fusion Drive?
I've seen the Macworld Tutorial on a DIY Fusion Drive but i'm still not sure if doing that will work in the same way as the preinstalled 2012 iMac Fusion Drive... I know that Mac OSX will treat the combined drives as one, but in terms of moving files depending upon their usage is another matter.
If the Macworld step by step is followed will Mountain Lion handle frequently used files / apps like the apple presentation states or will it just use the drives as one and not increase the performance of my machine?
Any help on this would be much appreciated, especially if anyone has followed the Macworld steps etc!
Thanks
Darren

Thanks fir the reply, I thought with the fusion drive the SSD and HDD were two seperate storage devices seen by OSX as one volume, and the software determins where the files most used will be placed and accessed from.
I've read a bit about this here;
http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/ss/Setting-Up-A-Fusion-Drive-On-Your- Current-Mac.htm
but would be great to hear first hand experience!!
With this DIY approach it appears that the same functionality of the 2012 iMacs is achieved but simply not using the older Disk Utility, but a newer version only included on the newer models...

Fusion Drive of late 2013 Imac

Is the fusion drive of the late 2013 iMac a combination of a PCIe ssd and a HD or does it have a sata ssd?

Apple - Press Info - Apple Updates iMac
says it's PCIe

3TB Fusion Drive dying / dead? iMac late 2012

I purchased a 'Refurbished 27-inch iMac 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7' from the Apple UK refurb store in March 2013 with a 3TB Fusion Drive. It has been fine up until I installed Yosemite when it started to freeze all the time and I had the spinning ball all the time.
Only way to get back was to hold the button at the back and reboot. Kept doing this until I backed up and did a clean install of Yosemite. Fine for a week or two then happened again. I have just wasted a whole day trying to go back to Mavericks and it worked fine for an hour or two then went the same way, spinning ball, unresponsive so I can eliminate Yosemite now as it is fine on my Macbook and has been since the day I installed it (same day I installed in iMac).
Just tried another clean install but it first said the HD had failed and do I want to repair the Fusion drive? My guess is that the SSD is fine but the other drive is dying a slow death.
Have a genius appointment booked in for tomorrow so will take it up there to see what they say. Any idea on what price I am looking at for a Apple to fit a replacement 3TB HD at all? Paid £2k for this and not done 2 years yet so not best please and dubious about going for another Fusion Drive again. Didn't take Apple Care although should have really, especially with a refurb. Hindsight eh!
Just tried again to re-install Mavericks and getting 'Install Failed' The Installer could not start the computer from "Macinotosh HD". Try selecting your disk using the Startup Disk utility.

I purchased a 'Refurbished 27-inch iMac 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7' from the Apple UK refurb store in March 2013 with a 3TB Fusion Drive. It has been fine up until I installed Yosemite when it started to freeze all the time and I had the spinning ball all the time.
Only way to get back was to hold the button at the back and reboot. Kept doing this until I backed up and did a clean install of Yosemite. Fine for a week or two then happened again. I have just wasted a whole day trying to go back to Mavericks and it worked fine for an hour or two then went the same way, spinning ball, unresponsive so I can eliminate Yosemite now as it is fine on my Macbook and has been since the day I installed it (same day I installed in iMac).
Just tried another clean install but it first said the HD had failed and do I want to repair the Fusion drive? My guess is that the SSD is fine but the other drive is dying a slow death.
Have a genius appointment booked in for tomorrow so will take it up there to see what they say. Any idea on what price I am looking at for a Apple to fit a replacement 3TB HD at all? Paid £2k for this and not done 2 years yet so not best please and dubious about going for another Fusion Drive again. Didn't take Apple Care although should have really, especially with a refurb. Hindsight eh!
Just tried again to re-install Mavericks and getting 'Install Failed' The Installer could not start the computer from "Macinotosh HD". Try selecting your disk using the Startup Disk utility.

Fusion Drive help, Keep getting errors.

I just installed a SSD in my MBP 2009. I want to turn it into a fusion drive. I'm following the directions on the internet, and this is what I get...
"-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                119.7 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Alex Erlenbach's Mac... 499.2 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *1.3 GB     disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        1.3 GB     disk2s2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk3
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk4
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk5
/dev/disk6
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk6
/dev/disk7
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk7
/dev/disk8
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *6.3 MB     disk8
/dev/disk9
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *2.1 MB     disk9
/dev/disk10
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *1.0 MB     disk10
/dev/disk11
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk11
/dev/disk12
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk12
/dev/disk13
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *1.0 MB     disk13
-bash-3.2# diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
> diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
Started CoreStorage operation
Unmounting disk0
Repartitioning disk0
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Rediscovering disk0
A problem occurred; undoing all changes
Error: -5343: MediaKit reports no such partition
-bash-3.2# diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
Started CoreStorage operation
Unmounting disk0
Repartitioning disk0
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Rediscovering disk0
A problem occurred; undoing all changes
Error: -5343: MediaKit reports no such partition
-bash-3.2# diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
Started CoreStorage operation
Unmounting disk0
Repartitioning disk0
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Rediscovering disk0
A problem occurred; undoing all changes
Error: -5343: MediaKit reports no such partition
-bash-3.2#
-bash-3.2# diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk0 /dev/disk1
diskutil corestorage create AlexErlenbach'sFusionDrive /dev/disk1 /dev/disk0
Started CoreStorage operation
Unmounting disk1
A problem occurred; undoing all changes
Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk
-bash-3.2#
I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.
Help?

aerlenbach
I successfully followed the blog.centurio.net and pintofcode.com procedure to set up a Fusion drive on my 2011 IMAC with SSD & HD yesterday.
I did at one point have the 69888 error.   To correct this:
In the procedure for (Pintofcode)MERGING THE DRIVES, instead of booting from the recovery drive, I booted from the bootable USB stick.
I hope it helps.
Andy Smith5

Does Boot Camp work with Fusion Drive

After having Boot Camp fail this morning while partitioning the drive, and now having to erase and restore my entire hard drive, 500GB worth of crap, I am wondering -- does Boot Camp work with the fusion drive? My new iMac has one of these things, and I am wondering if that is maybe the reason it did not work.
Thanks
Bob

mende1 wrote:
A virtual machine is less risky because it doesn't modify your hard disk. However, it gives you less performance because it doesn't use all the hardware of your computer.
While that is true the actual performance available depends on how much resources you have, and how much is made available to Windows. (Win 7 in BC on my iMac gets a 5.9, in a VM it gets a 4.8) all the reduction is in the graphics performance. Disk performance in the VM is faster. I have 16GB or Ram, the VM gets 8 of that when it is running.
If games are to played a VM is useless.

CD DRIVE FOR NEW IMAC 2012

can anyone please advise on the best optical drive for a new imac 2012 model in uk.

You can use any external optical drive with the new iMacs
You can use Thunderbolt, FireWire or USB 2.0/3.0 connected drives.
Here's one source for Mac optical drives
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/optical-drives/superdrives/

Should I get standard hard drive or fusion drive on a new 21.5" iMac?

I'm thinking about getting a new 21.5" iMac. How do I decide whether to get the standard hard drive (5400 rpm) or the Fusion Drive? Besides Web surfing and email, I would be using it to play flash games, listen to Internet radio, and stream movies occasionally on Netflix.

@TmanW:
Technically you cannot control where data goes on the Fusion drive 100% of the time as in the case of a two drive setup (SSD + HDD), but you can tilt where the data goes by watching disk usage and also partioning. My understanding how the Fusion drive works from MacPerformanceGuide.com (where they tested the Fusion on a late 2012 27" iMac) is that as long as you do not have more the 112GB filled on the Fusion, the drive won't kick data to the HDD when peforming tasks that use more than the 4GB buffer. I interpret this to mean as long as I keep the capacity below this 112GB threshold, I am more likely to get SSD performance. And to keep things under this threshold, one could just use the Fusion drive for system and apps only and perhaps targeted file usage (working Photoshop files that would be transferred back to non-SSD storage afterwards).
MPG also tested the Fusion drive with a partition method that biases the first partition to be 2/3 SSD and in this scenario a user can effectively (though once again not 100%) target SSD usage most of the time.
Once I get my new iMac, prior to cloning my existing system on to the Fusion drive, I will see firsthand if these tests are true to form with their results.

Is there a way to run a external ssd with my mid 2011 iMac hdd in a raid configuration and basically have a fusion drive

is there a way to run a external ssd with my mid 2011 iMac hdd in a raid configuration and basically have a fusion drive

A Fusion Drive is not a RAID; it's a CoreStorage logical volume group. While it's technically possible to do as you suggest, there would be little or no benefit from it.

Best way to install Windows 8 on an iMac with 1tb Fusion drive

I just ordered my first iMac. Not my first mac, I have owned numerous Mac laptops in the past but am finally ready to make the switch for my main desktop .
Now I need to installed windows 8.1 because I need to run visual studio. That is literally the only app I need to run.
Ordered with the below specs:
27" imac
i7 processor
1tb fusion drive
16gb ram.
I am thinking of two options:
1) use parallels or vmware fusion and create a 200gb windows virtual machine and give this machine 6gb ram (4gb is recommend by more couldn't hurt). since the fusion drive works at a block level, my windows OS and vs should parts of the VM file should get moved to the SSD as I will be using it a lot. my main goal is max performance. i will be working on metro apps (not windows phone apps). any recommendation on which is better? parallels or vmware? stability and performance is key. i don't need any fancy UI integration and i won't run any games. happy to run windows in fullscreen mode.
2) create a 200gb partition and run bootcamp. cleary more stable but will it be faster than above because i am assuming the ssd caching will not working here?
per mircorosft website they give instructions for both options above, but i am looking for realworld experience in what will get be most stability in terms of network IO (working on UPNP apps so need stable network bridging) and then performance is key.
HDD size is not a big deal for me as most of my media lives in my synology NAS.

virtual machine will be more stable
bootcamp will be faster but the only place you will notice is if you play new 3d games on diwndows

Fusion Drive or HDD for video editing

I'm editing videos with Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro with a Macbook Pro and I'll be upgrading to an iMac soon. There's an offer in a web store for a new iMac 27" 3,4ghz with a 1tb hdd drive for 2314 dollars. There's not an upgrade possibility, so I would be missing out the Fusion Drive. If I bought the same setup with a Fusion Drive from Mac Store I'd have to pay 2848 dollars, so I would be paying 534 dollars for a Fusion Drive. This seems a bit too much for my budget, though I'd like to have the FD. I went a Apple certified store and they said the performance is seen in opening apps, overall performance and for example scrolling the iPhoto folders. These don't matter at all to me, only what matters is that I will be using this computer for at least 4-5 years and planning on editing 4k video files on it, so it doesn't get old too quick. I'm also planning to buy a external ssd in the future to store all my video files in. So is the Fusion Drive a must have and something I should pay 543 dollars more or could I do with a 1tb hdd -drive and a external thunderbolt drive? Thanks for the answers!

After numerous pageouts and pageins I was forced to go from 4GB of RAM to 8GB of ram due to my Photoshop work, and that was just photoshop. I could have probably gotten by at 6 GB but I figured what the heck. If you get to a place where you need to let your machine sit and render for a while and then want to work in Photoshop for anything but the smallest images, you'll definitely be helped by more than 4GB of memory. BUT - and this is a big but - the iMac should be capable of doing the work. What is sigificant to you is unknown to us. Some folks gag at the thought of not running FCP or even their basic computer, without RAID and consider RAID a significant improvement.
You realize that if you want FULL hdef capability you need RAID, Compressed HD and DV can be done without RAID. I dunno about external RAID on iMacs via firewire. If you are doing full HD then you'll probably want a Mac Pro. If you are not doing full HD then your iMac would be very capable. After all, it's still much faster than many of the old G4 machines that did video and photoshop in years past. Your renders will take a bit longer and photoshop may page out a bit more, but it will all eventually work. If you are making money with it, get the Mac Pro. If not and money is tight the iMac will work.
I think though, when you look at the 24" iMac (the smaller ones use cheap TN screens that are worthless for photography) and add the memory you need and add in the cost of an external HD setup for FCP you will find it won't be that expensive to get a BARE bones Mac and add memory and other internal HD's from Crucial and other suppliers. Dell makes some decent, not too expensive 24" monitors and you'll find the cost of a MacPro won't be that huge - especially after you look at the price of FCP Studio + the Master Collection.

Fusion Drive option for iMac 21.5" late 2013

Fusion Drive option for iMac 21.5" late 2013 will upgrade main SATA HDD to 7200rpm model? Or just add SSD to standart 5400 rpm HDD for 21.5"?
Thank you for your attention.

You can't add an internal drive, but you can add as much storage as you want via Thunderbolt.

Installing Windows 7 on Late 2013 iMac w/ Fusion Drive

Sorry in advance for the long post, but I have tried to exhaust all possibilities, and bring as much knowledge about our environment to the table to avoid confusion.
Here's our goal: Install Mac & Windows on a Late 2013 iMac with a 1TB Fusion Drive
Install our Mac Image with Deepfreeze on Partition 1
Install our Windows 7 x64 Image with DeepFreeze on Partition 2
Here's why our goal cannot work out of the box:
Deepfreeze for Mac, is not supported on a Fusion Drive. Now before anyone says "just don't use deepfreeze"...we are using it, and that is that.
In order to get our existing image to work on the iMac, we had to split the Fusion Drive.
Splitting Up the Fusion Drive
We booted into Recovery, Opened up terminal, retrieved the LvGUID, deleted it, and split up the SSD from the HD.
So now, we have a 128GB SSD, and 1TB HD showing up under Diskutilitiy.
We then partitioned the 1TB HD, into two, 500GB Partitions. One for Mac OSX 10.9.4, and the other for Windows.
The 128GB SSD is going to be used for scratch space, temp, etc. And is irrelevant at this time.
Deploying our Mac Image
After splitting the Fusion Drive, we netbooted and installed a "NetRestore" of our image. Worked completely fine, no issues. DeepFreeze Works fine, the 128GB SSD shows up just fine, and the other 500GB Windows Partition shows up fine. All drives / partitions can be written to with no problem.
Deploying our Windows Image
Deployed our Windows Partition image as we have done in the past, by booting into a windows PE Disk. (We have other various 2009, 2010, and 2011 iMacs across campus, with NO FUSION DRIVES installed, and dual boot them successfully using the same procedure. Minus the splitting of the fusion drive part of course) After the Windows image is deployed to the windows partition, we then boot it up to a Windows 7 Install disk to fix the MBR, Bootrec, and BCD options to allow it to boot properly. Here's where we run into issues: Upon getting the Windows 7 Install screen, the USB Keyboard and Mouse, DO NOT WORK.
Here's the options we've tried to get them to work properly
1. Tried another known working Mac USB Keyboard & Mouse = Failed
2. Tried a known working Windows Keyboard & Mouse = Failed
3. Plugged Just a known working Mac Keyboard into each USB Port to see if recognized = Failed
4. Plugged Just a known working Windows Keyboard into each USB Port to see if recognized = Failed
5. Plugged Just a known working Mac Mouse into each USB Port to see if recognized = Failed
6. Plugged Just a known working Windows Mouse into each USB Port to see if recognized = Failed
7. A Windows 8.1 Recovery USB will boot and the USB Mouse & Keyboard are recognized and installed! (YAY!!) However, we cannot repair a Windows 7 install with Windows 8.1..
BootCamp Drivers & Support Media
Downloaded the Current BootCamp Support drivers to enable the USB and other various drivers to be loaded during setup (Placed the $WinPEDriver$ and AutoUnattend.xml, and BootCamp folder on the Root of a USB, and modified a Windows7 Installation disk and placed on the root as well) The drivers do not load. Have also placed on a brand new USB2, and USB3 flash drive formatted at FAT32, to see if that made a difference, which it did not. The BootCamp USB made within Mac, it loads saying "Now booting into Boot Camp Assistant Created USB Drive..." or something like that (Don't remember the exact Message)
Side Note:
Restored Fusion Drive to its original State, and booted from the BootCamp USB drive, still no usb Mouse & Keyboard Support.

I have same issue
Tried everything differend hdd,ssd as well
Basically when trying instal win 7 via iOS maverick when reboting and windows booting to the first scree everything freezing cant do much.
Also tried install clear ssd without any system, but soon after format ssd or hdd I have error that I cant use this disk to install windows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is funny Windows 8 installing without any problem!!!
what is going on APPLE??wher is support
This issue I have only on Late 2013 on my other Late 2012 this issue not exist and everything working as should.

Unable to install Windows on an 2010 iMac with home-made Fusion Drive

Hi there,
I've been very happy using mi iMac eversince I installed the SSD alongside the HDD. Only recently I tried to install Windows 7 but it doesn't seem to work. The installer runs, it seems as though Windows is installing but it doesn't ever seem to be able to boot. I've tried countless times. Everytime it boots to Windows it shows nothing but just a black screen with the cursor blinking at the top left corner.
Now, when I home-made the Fusion Drive the Mac OS was only 10.8.2 or older and I know that with 10.8.3 Apple has made improvements towards boot camp and especially the 3TB HDDs. I wonder if this could have anything to do.
Anyway, please enlighten me as to what is it that I need to do to make it work. I've been reading something about the position in which the Windows partition resides compared to GUID and EFI but honestly I have just the tiniest idea about all that. Just for the record, the following is what shows in the Terminal after diskutil list command:
diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         255.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         942.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         57.0 GB    disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Fusion Drive           *1.2 TB     disk2
Hope you can help..!

Hello again, by reading a couple of posts I learnt the steps and so, using an external OS I repartitioned the two internal drives making sure the Windows partition wasn't part of the Fusion Drive. I was very excited as I was sure it would work and went ahead and started the Win7 installation even before the MacOS was restored into the iMac.
No good news though. The installer run as expected however, when the time came for the iMac to boot from the newly installed Windows7, all I saw was a blank screen and a blinking dash at the top left corner of the screen.
Lastly, this morning I woke up to see that my old system was fully restored from Time Machine external back up. I also leart that using the Boot Camp Assistant I could remove the Windows partition that I created on Terminal from the external OS, which was surprising, I honestly thought that that partitioning arrangement would be off-limits for the Boot Camp Assistant.
Still, I haven't been succesfull installing Windows back to my Mac, can anybody help?

Trouble with iMac and Fusion Drive

Hello, I recently tried installing Windows 8.1 via Boot Camp on my Retina iMac. The install was unsuccessful, so I went to Boot Camp and deleted the partition. After that, I realized I was not able to access that space on the HDD. Reading around, I ended up deleting the Logical Volume, and breaking the Fusion Drive into 2 separate drives. I have tried to consolidate them again using Disk Utility from recovery, but I keep getting an error. After this, I tried it within Terminal. I keep getting an error that the drive cannot be unmounted. Can anyone shed light onto why this may be, and how to fix the issue? I appreciate any help I can get.

I figured it out, made a bootable USB, booted to that, then rebuilt the Fusion Drive inside Disk Utility.

Integration of Fusion Drive in standard HDD iMac 2012

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