Guide - Fusion Drive using tonymacx86 Tools & Chimera

[theandy94]

How did you get to boot into the newly installed OS X? Whenever I get into chimera the fusion drive is listed as a blank drive and when I get into it, it just says "Can't find" and goes back into chimera.

I booted with the usb again and in chimera I choosed to boot the installer.
I don't know why, but if you do this, you get to your new installed OS.

 

[theandy94]

Thanks Neil for writing a great tutorial! It's exactly how I did it a few days ago. I started documenting my steps for the benefit of all, but now I won't have to. Thanks again for picking up that ball and running with it.

I'd like to find a way to do it without relying on having an additional drive with 10.8.2. I was able to boot a Unibeast stick and make the Fusion drive from the terminal there, then install OS X onto it, but after it was installed, Unibeast would not boot the Fusion drive for the first time as would be done for a normal drive the first time after a fresh install. If I have some spare time this week, there is one more thing I want to try before I give up on it. I'm not an expert on any of this, so there's probably some vital knowledge I'm lacking here that either makes it simple or makes it impossible.

Just try the way I did it.
Boot with the usb again and in Chimera choose your Installer Partition, it will boot into the fresh installed OS instead of the installer.
But please don't ask me why, I'm just glad it worked.

 

[p3ncil]

Thanks so much for this guide

 

[Rakuun]

I followed these instructions and now have a working "Fusion Drive". I formatted and created the drive using the terminal on my install disk, installed OS X, booted with a USB drive and then made my Fusion Drive bootable.

I am using a 128GB Samsung SSD and a 1TB Hitachi HD. My machine now boots much quicker and applications open speedily.

Thanks!

 

[DBP]

Good job on the clear outline Neil, but there's a fundamental issue which worries me.​

Has anyone actually shown that Fusion Drive works? Not that you can create a Fusion drive, we know that. But does it reliably do what everyone thinks it does?

When you put more data on there than will fit on the SSD you'll see it slow down as it starts using the HDD. But then when you repeatedly access data which is on the HDD has anyone shown that it gets migrated to the SSD?
I have seen a few tests so far that show that it doesn't and lots that don't show anything useful.
Maybe it works but what's the key to get the migration happening? Haven't seen it yet.

Has anyone been able to recover data from a crashed system? Repair the filesystem? I've seen some simple tests that produces fatal errors (as in blow all your data away and start again). This does not induce comfort.

For now I'll stick with separate SSD and HDD disks and put the data on each that needs to be on each.
I'm happy for you guys to experiment and be on the bleeding edge (presumably on systems you're not depending on for work) but be prepared for some pain. I'm just sayin'...

<Wanders off muttering about barge poles...>

 

[bxc0843]

Thank you for the incredible thorough instructions. Just finished setting up my Fusion Drive and it seems to be working perfect so far. Very snappy indeed. Much thanks to you and to the Tony Mac community for making this possible.

 

[theandy94]

Good job on the clear outline Neil, but there's a fundamental issue which worries me.​

Has anyone actually shown that Fusion Drive works? Not that you can create a Fusion drive, we know that. But does it reliably do what everyone thinks it does?

When you put more data on there than will fit on the SSD you'll see it slow down as it starts using the HDD. But then when you repeatedly access data which is on the HDD has anyone shown that it gets migrated to the SSD?
I have seen a few tests so far that show that it doesn't and lots that don't show anything useful.
Maybe it works but what's the key to get the migration happening? Haven't seen it yet.

Has anyone been able to recover data from a crashed system? Repair the filesystem? I've seen some simple tests that produces fatal errors (as in blow all your data away and start again). This does not induce comfort.

For now I'll stick with separate SSD and HDD disks and put the data on each that needs to be on each.
I'm happy for you guys to experiment and be on the bleeding edge (presumably on systems you're not depending on for work) but be prepared for some pain. I'm just sayin'...

<Wanders off muttering about barge poles...>

Jollyjinx, who showed us the basic way to this guide also tested if frequently used data gets copied from the hdd to the ssd.
Here a little copy from some text of jollyjinx' homepage:
[h=2]FUD will work with just two HDDs[/h]Just out of curiosity I created a Fusion drive (FUD) with two HDDs (same size, one USB, one FW connected). Guess what - FUD is shovelling the data from the second disk to the first one as soon as one accesses the files on disk2 more often.
Interesting enough it always chose the faster drive (USB in my case) to be the caching drive, independent on the order of the drives I used on the command line or the order they were connected.
Furthermore I created a FUD drive with one SSD and two HDDs. It first stored data to the SSD, then to HDD1, then to HDD2. So HDDs were not striped and even though HDD2 was faster it used the HDD1 I’ve given it on the commandline to store things after the SSD.
It did not move data around devices as well so did just exhibit normal concatenated disk characteristics, nothing FUD like.

 

[the_WB]

Good job on the clear outline Neil, but there's a fundamental issue which worries me.​

Has anyone actually shown that Fusion Drive works? Not that you can create a Fusion drive, we know that. But does it reliably do what everyone thinks it does?

When you put more data on there than will fit on the SSD you'll see it slow down as it starts using the HDD. But then when you repeatedly access data which is on the HDD has anyone shown that it gets migrated to the SSD?
I have seen a few tests so far that show that it doesn't and lots that don't show anything useful.
Maybe it works but what's the key to get the migration happening? Haven't seen it yet.

Yes, it works. It's automatic and it's in the background. Anyone can use iostat to see what is happening on each drive. Where have you seen it reported that it doesn't work? Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question, I don't want to know. On second thought, maybe I do want to know, so I can take their words with a grain of salt in the future.

Patrick Stein was the trailblazer on how to make your own:
http://jollyjinx.tumblr.com/post/34638496292/fusion-drive-on-older-macs-yes-since-apple-has

And Ars Technica has explained it all in detail:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/1...ining-doc-ars-tears-open-apples-fusion-drive/

 

[mannvicky]

How did you get to boot into the newly installed OS X? Whenever I get into chimera the fusion drive is listed as a blank drive and when I get into it, it just says "Can't find" and goes back into chimera.

i am in same situation.... is it that it will only work on fresh install OS X... i created the image of my currently working system and followed your steps. I also get the same message
"can't find"

also how do i undo my fusion drive... what is the command for it?

thanks.

 

[i5osx]

also how do i undo my fusion drive... what is the command for it?

thanks.

diskutil cs delete A0E3CC23-DB6F-4320-85F3-B51F83715937

replace A0E3CC23-DB6F-4320-85F3-B51F83715937
by your LV UUID (diskutil cs list; first entry)