MacOS – make a DIY Fusion Drive

core-storagefilesystemfusion-drivemacosssd

I have a Mac Mini with two drives: a 256GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. From what I've read, the new Fusion Drive does all of it's magic in software, using the Core Storage APIs.

Can I get my setup to behave like a Fusion Drive? That is, I want the two drives to appear as a single logical volume, with the system automatically moving frequently accessed files to the SSD. I understand that we can easily stripe or extend or RAID drives, but the automatically managed tiered storage features of Fusion drive would be great to have without investing in new hardware.

Best Answer

Yes, you can create a fusion drive on older Macs, described in full length here:

  • You obviously need both an SSD and a HD. Let's assume they are known to the OS as disk1 and disk7. You can check disk id by diskutil list.
  • diskutil cs create bla disk1 disk7 to create it, where bla is the name you give to the fusion drive.
  • diskutil cs list and take note of the Logical Volume Group ID
  • diskutil cs createVolume <ID from above> jhfs+ blub 100%, where blub is the name you give to the volume.

Link to Apple instructions: Click Here

Note: These are instructions to fix a split fusion drive, but work also for making one.

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