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There has been a great deal of misinformation about Fusion Drive recently, and this thread aims to dispel any rumors.
What is Fusion Drive?
Fusion Drive is Apple's marketing name for a Core Storage feature that automatically tiers commonly-used files (really file blocks) between solid state (flash) and rotational (hard disk) drives. A Logical Volume Group in Mountain Lion created with an SSD and HD will automatically exhibit the behavior Apple is calling Fusion Drive, thanks to JollyJinx's work
Fusion Drive, being block-based, must be built at install-time and will wipe the contents of the drives used to create it. There is additional difficulty when repairing. While the special copy of Disk Utility included with Late 2012 Mac desktops is the only version capable of operating on a Fusion Drive, it may still require a drive wipe in the case of corruption, and must be repaired from the Installer. Fusion Drive is not a backup solution, and may in fact be more susceptible to filesystem corruption; exercise caution. Once created, a Fusion Drive can only support one additional partition, a Windows or Linux installation, for instance.
Finally, Chimera/Chameleon is not yet capable of booting Core Storage volumes, like Fusion Drive or FileVault2, you must use Clover EFI
What is Core Storage?
Core Storage is a Logical Volume Manager for OS X which abstracts certain filesystem, partition, and drive concepts, and goes a long way towards modernizing the increasingly-old HFS+ filesystem, enabling features such as full disk encryption. When using Core Storage, the system will contain one or more Logical Volume Groups, which "import" or contain physical drives, raid sets, or images. These Physical Volumes combine to form the disk space which will be used in one or more "exported" Logical Volume Families, which provide the Core Storage features such as FileVault2 and Fusion Drive. The Logical Volume Families in turn "export" one or more Logical Volumes which behave like partitions. Logical Volumes are formatted with a filesystem such as HFS+.
At the moment, Core Storage volumes can only be created with the `diskutil` command line (Terminal.app) utility. FileVault2 is an exception because the volume created maintains a one-to-one relationship with the physical disk, and the encryption can be applied "live" and in the background.
How do I create a Fusion Drive?
Fusion Drives must be created at install time, and will wipe the existing contents of the drives used to create it.
What is Fusion Drive?
Fusion Drive is Apple's marketing name for a Core Storage feature that automatically tiers commonly-used files (really file blocks) between solid state (flash) and rotational (hard disk) drives. A Logical Volume Group in Mountain Lion created with an SSD and HD will automatically exhibit the behavior Apple is calling Fusion Drive, thanks to JollyJinx's work
Fusion Drive, being block-based, must be built at install-time and will wipe the contents of the drives used to create it. There is additional difficulty when repairing. While the special copy of Disk Utility included with Late 2012 Mac desktops is the only version capable of operating on a Fusion Drive, it may still require a drive wipe in the case of corruption, and must be repaired from the Installer. Fusion Drive is not a backup solution, and may in fact be more susceptible to filesystem corruption; exercise caution. Once created, a Fusion Drive can only support one additional partition, a Windows or Linux installation, for instance.
Finally, Chimera/Chameleon is not yet capable of booting Core Storage volumes, like Fusion Drive or FileVault2, you must use Clover EFI
What is Core Storage?
Core Storage is a Logical Volume Manager for OS X which abstracts certain filesystem, partition, and drive concepts, and goes a long way towards modernizing the increasingly-old HFS+ filesystem, enabling features such as full disk encryption. When using Core Storage, the system will contain one or more Logical Volume Groups, which "import" or contain physical drives, raid sets, or images. These Physical Volumes combine to form the disk space which will be used in one or more "exported" Logical Volume Families, which provide the Core Storage features such as FileVault2 and Fusion Drive. The Logical Volume Families in turn "export" one or more Logical Volumes which behave like partitions. Logical Volumes are formatted with a filesystem such as HFS+.
At the moment, Core Storage volumes can only be created with the `diskutil` command line (Terminal.app) utility. FileVault2 is an exception because the volume created maintains a one-to-one relationship with the physical disk, and the encryption can be applied "live" and in the background.
How do I create a Fusion Drive?
Fusion Drives must be created at install time, and will wipe the existing contents of the drives used to create it.
- Boot your Installer USB, and launch Terminal
- Run
Code:
diskutil list
- Note the disk numbers of the SSD and HD (like disk0, disk1, disk2)
- Replace <SSD> with the SSD disk number, and the same for <HD>. You may also replace "Fusion Drive" with a different name. Run
Code:
diskutil corestorage create "Fusion Drive" <SSD> <HD>
- Run
Code:
diskutil corestorage list
- Note the UUID of the Logical Volume Group, like DE85044F-EADA-4F26-93B7-8CD0ADF006EC
- Replace <UUID> with the UUID you noted above. You may also replace "Macintosh HD" with a different name. Run
Code:
diskutil corestorage createVolume <UUID> jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%