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El Capitan 10.11.6 GA-Z170-UD5-TH Fusion Drive

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Sep 12, 2016
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Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 TH
CPU
Intel i7 6700 non-K
Graphics
2048MB Asus GeForce GTX 960 STRIX OC Edition
Mac
  1. iMac
  2. MacBook Air
  3. MacBook Pro
  4. Mac mini
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hi guys,

I've been reading numerous posts and guides and feel like I am prepared OK to start my first build after several years... My first Hackintosh was a tiny MSI notebook running 10.6 - it still works.

Here's the hardware I bought:

GA-Z170-UD5-TH
i6700 (non-K)
2048MB Asus GeForce GTX 960 STRIX OC Edition
16GB (2x 8192MB) Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4-2400 DIMM CL16-16-16 Dual Kit
3000GB Seagate Desktop HDD ST3000DM001
250GB Crucial MX200

On my iMac 27 i7 2.8 I've been using an SSD in the CD-Bay and the internal HD - however as two separate drives, not as a fusion drive. In order to make backups and general organization of the system easier, I would like to create a fusion drive.

I've found several tutorials on the web on how to create a fusion drive once OS X is installed using the terminal. However all of the tutorials refer to 10.9 or 10.8. Also it is not quite clear what the correct order of things might be when starting from scratch. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction?

  1. Do I still install OS X using the regular tonymacx86 guide for El Capitan on just the SSD, or do I have to to do something specific in the preparation for a fusion drive?
  2. Is there an updated guide (needed) for terminal commands to create a fusion disk under El Capitan? Any changes since 10.9?
  3. Once the the fusion disk was created in one of the tutorials I watched, the two original separate disks still showed on the desktop and the finder - is this always the case? Are there ways to only have the fusion drive in the system, just like on an original Apple machine?
  4. Is there anything I need to do after the terminal commands are done? Any changes to the boot loader, etc?
Thanks a bunch, this is hopefully the last 'theoretical' question before I actually start building. I'm sure we will meet again, once I run into problems... :)

BTW: does someone have an updated plist for the GA-Z170-UD5-TH?
 
I've been putting together and tweaking a system similar to yours (GA-Z170-UD5 non-TH, i5 and integrated graphics). I just decided to put my 250 GB SSD and 2TB HDD into one fusion drive to make restoring from a time machine migration easier.

The process of making a fusion drive is still pretty simple, just the two lines in terminal, but I've been unable to actually install onto it. The install starts every time, but quickly stops and gives me "POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Resource temporarily unavailable."

If I figure it out, I'll be sure to post! If you figure it out yourself, I'd love to hear your solution
 
Definitely. I am still wondering if having two separate drives isn't the better solution. In my current setup (iMac) I have an SSD an a HD in my computer. SSD is for programs and sample libraries, System, User. I 'connected' the HD via symlinks (using symbolic linker) to the system Pictures-, Audio-, Documents-, etc. folders.
So when I have a saving or opening dialog, the folder on the HD act just like as if they were on the SSD, but they're not. That way I could easily upgrade the Data HD, without having to backup the entire system. I could just take the old HD out, clone it to a bigger one and put that back in. Not sure if something like that would work as a fusion drive.
Same with the System SSD - I could just swap it out for a bigger or different one - if needed - by simply cloning.
Even a restore from Time Machine works perfectly.
So maybe there's nothing to be won using a Fusion Drive...?
 
I tried using symlinks myself, but I was hoping to avoid that headache, since I wanted to put some applications on a symlinked subfolder in Applications (I have like 120GB of apps alone, my lil 250GB SSD can't take that), and I had to hand transfer those from Time Machine's folder. And things like Launch Pad weren't seeing them.

Another problem was that it wouldn't let me remove the Documents folder in my User file to make a symlink folder there. Never got around trying a proper Time Machine restore into symlinks before I tried fusion drives. I'm hoping It Just Works? If my user's Music folder is symlinked to another drive and I do the migration, it just goes into the non-SSD's drive?

Really wish I could get fusion drive working! But there's something happening with the formatting and access that I can't figure out. But it does kind of put the health of your SSD in the hands of Apple's fusion drive decisions. Having a good working symlinked SSD-HDD system would be great, but it's been a hassle for me to get to there
 
To be honest... the whole symlinks thing took me like 5 minutes (once I knew how it's done) and worked like a charm. Really everything worked without a problem. iTunes, Music, Documents, Videos,... all on my HD while everything that needs speed is on the SSD.

I will probably do it again since Fusion Drive seem a hassle to get bootable.
Oh, an Time Machine understood all the Symlinks perfectly, so no problem there, either.

Lucky me, though. Physically built my Hackintosh today and one of the two RAM DIMMs was DOA. Great. Going for different Memory, now.
 
That really sucks. Crucial is great with our mobo, though, since it has native 2400 speeds.
 
Go replacement memory, now and it works. I just have kernel_task running at 97% in idle... What the hack is that?
 
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