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Create a "Fusion Drive" on your CustoMac

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tonyd said:
Hi

In your EFI directory you have your config.plist. However during the install Clover inserts another config.plist in the EFI/OEM/SystemProductName directory which it appears it always defaults to - ignoring the main one. You have two options 1. Delete the config.plist in the EFI/OEM/SystemProductName directory, or copy your amended config.plist to that directory as well.

I delete the second version as it is confusing.

Good luck with Clover its GREAT....
Click to expand...

Or rename SystemProductName to your motherboard's product name from DMI and configure clover for that specific motherboard.
 
thanks tonyd

It seems that in my case the problem was that clover would simply read the first config.plist it found. Which happened to be one I had at the root of another disk for testing. I deleted it and it's working now. Finally, SSD performance without having to mess with the directory structure :)
 
Does this require "Apple Issues Special OS X 10.8.2 Update for New Macs" to be installed? Or just OSX 10.8.2 will work on Fusion Drive?
 
More details emerge:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/1...ining-doc-ars-tears-open-apples-fusion-drive/

This part fits some of the discussion in this thread:
"Fusion Drive is not meant to be a feature that appeals to the propeller-head geek. The kind of person who already has an SSD and a spinny disk in his Mac... and who symlinks his iTunes and iPhoto libraries off the HDD onto the SDD... and who enjoys meticulously balancing out which files go where will almost certainly not enjoy Fusion Drive's hands-off approach. Fusion Drive is not designed to be poked at or prodded. Rather, much in the same way that Time Machine's hands-off approach brought backup to people who otherwise wouldn't be bothering, Fusion Drive's hands-off approach brings tiering to Mac masses who otherwise can't be bothered. The presentation is very Apple-like, with no knobs to twiddle."
 
For most customMac there's no point to doing this because you have the flexibility on storage needs. The problem I see with this and RapidStorage on Windows is that this system performs a lot of extra IOs. If you storage your apps on 1 SSD and store your media files on a 2nd drive, you don't really need FD.
 
Fantastic, tonymacx86, as always.

and here, I attach a nice icon for these fusion drive users who like to customize their systems. It is in ICNS format.
 
Hackint0sh Desktop Pro
GA-B75M-D3V |  i5 2500K |  GeForce GTX 650
Marvelous! Thank you for that excellent guide. I can boot off of my SSD now. Also, after manually installing the bootloader, OS X recognizes my ASmedia controller again, thereby granting SSD Trim support (installed via Multibeast). This is what I have been looking for. Fused together a 120 gb SSD and 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD. Thanks a bunch!

One downside is that blackmagic disk speed test is showing a measly 140-180 MB/s Read vs 320-360 MB/s Read on my non-fused SSD install. I selected a 1 GB stress file and Documents folder (empty). Don't know if i need to wait a few weeks to let Fusion learn disk usage statistics or if I should use another program. Any suggestions?

sirenum said:
I had to take a few additional steps to get it to work. Here's how I did it:

1. Carbon Copy Clone the existing boot drive (SSD in my case) to an additional disk (let's call it "Clone")

2. Move the custom DSDT.aml from chimera's /Extra to the root of Clone so that clover can find it

3. Install clover to Clone (using the installer) and make sure it boots

4. Boot into Clone and follow mrengles instructions to create the fusion drive. (my new "Macintosh HD")

5. "diskutil list" now shows 4 partitions on each of the physical fusion disks

Code: 
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.9 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         127.7 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3

The EFI partitions are just empty partitions that are required by I think the EFI standard. The "Boot OS X" partitions are the ones that later will show up in clover's boot menu. The Apple_CoreStorage partitions obviously make up the Fusion Drive.

Now I wanted to install clover to disk1 or disk2 (i.e. one of the physical fusion disks) but you can't just install it to the logical fusion drive (a.k.a. "Macintosh HD" in my case). Also, if you have a custom DSDT, you will have to put it into "Boot OS X" otherwise clover won't find it for some reason. So I decided to install clover to my SSD (/dev/disk2).

I downloaded the files for manual installation from sourceforge. I don't understand why some people like to choose exotic compression formats... you're gonna need XZ utils to unpack the iso.

6. Mount the iso, open a Terminal and cd into "/Volumes/Clover-LXXX-X64/usr/standalone/i386" (replace XXX with your version number)

7. Install the stage 0 bootloader to disk2 (in my case)
Code: 
sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk2

8. Install the stage 1 bootloader to the "Boot OS X" partition on disk2
Code: 
sudo dd if=boot1h2 of=/dev/rdisk2s3

9. Mount the "Boot OS X" partition
Code: 
diskutil mount /dev/disk2s3
and

10. copy the stage 2 bootloader, the dsdt and the EFI folder to "Boot OS X"
Code: 
cp x64/boot "/Volumes/Boot OS X"
cp /Extra/DSDT.aml "/Volumes/Boot OS X"
cp -R /Volumes/Clover-LXXX-X64/EFI "/Volumes/Boot OS X"

11. CCC everything back from Clone to Macintosh HD

12. Reboot and choose disk2 as your boot partition in BIOS and the respective "Boot OS X" in clover

I haven't figured out how to customize clover yet since it seems to ignore my EFI/config.plist. The mouse driver doesn't seem to work either. But I guess that's something for the clover forum.
Click to expand...
 
Also, how do you explicitly tell fusion drive where to store which files (blocks)? This is an interesting question, i haven't seen mentioned by anyone. Although this feature was mentioned during the keynote.

So what do you think?

btw I'm already using FS in an optibay-ed MBP, running just fine. It would be marvelous if I could tell paralles' win7.pvm file to be always stored in ssd - for instance.
 
The idea of Fusion Drive is OS is going to figure out that by itself.

If you need to specify which file need to store on SSD, which should not, that's not Fusion Drive, and you don't need a Fusion Drive.

okocsis said:
Also, how do you explicitly tell fusion drive where to store which files (blocks)? This is an interesting question, i haven't seen mentioned by anyone. Although this feature was mentioned during the keynote.

So what do you think?

btw I'm already using FS in an optibay-ed MBP, running just fine. It would be marvelous if I could tell paralles' win7.pvm file to be always stored in ssd - for instance.
Click to expand...
 
i understand but apple said during its keynote that you would be able to make exceptions from the FS algorithm.
 
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