What is Fusion Drive? Mac technologies: Fusion Drive We create a special bootable USB flash drive with the system
From installing Optical Bay to choosing an SSD and combining it with an HDD.
IT journalists sometimes forget that not all users delve into the nuances of certain software or hardware products as much as they do. That’s why I was very surprised when I saw a friend’s MacBook Pro 13 2010 with an HDD and DVD drive, which have not yet been replaced with something more useful standard means or via OptiBay.
This MacBook is almost six years old and isn't as fast as I'd like it to be. And this is especially noticeable when opening serious applications like Photoshop or something similar. I advised the owner to replace the HDD with an SSD, which would give a serious increase in speed. But solid state drive Not everyone can afford a normal volume.
I asked a friend about the frequency of using CD/DVD. He said that the last time he opened the drive was three years ago. I told him that accelerating the physical memory of an old MacBook Pro or iMac with minimal investment is possible with OptiBay, an inexpensive small-capacity SSD and a bundled HDD via Fusion Drive. The case was suggested by MacPlus specialists - thank you very much.
1. Educational program for dummies - getting acquainted with Fusion Drive
Fusion Drive is a specific software and hardware complex Apple, which is designed to combine SSD and HDD for collaboration. It automatically sorts frequently and infrequently used data and intelligently distributes it between drives based on the owner's individual work habits. This gives an increase in productivity without expensive components.
And this is our case. The budget is minimal, but the needs are maximum. Of course, ideally, just replace the HDD with an SSD of reasonable capacity. 500 GB of physical memory would be enough for him, but a solid-state drive of such a volume is expensive. And the combination of 128 GB SSD and 500 GB HDD in Fusion Drive will be the best solution. Fortunately, you can knit them yourself.
2. Choosing an SSD - focusing on “cheap and cheerful”
For installation in Optical Bay Any will do Designed for laptop SSD. I don’t think that in this case we need to delve into the nuances of certain hard drives- this is too large a topic that is suitable for a separate material. I’ll just give you simple advice that I use myself - focus on the average cost or the notorious “golden mean”, as well as read-write speed, number of rewrite cycles and compatibility with Mac.
As for the volume, in our case the choice is obvious - 128 GB. There is no point in taking less, and the price of more capacious options is frankly “biting”. But if you have a large budget, you can also look at 512 GB or 1 TB models. Then for Fusion Drive you can also take the most capacious HDD that you can generally find on sale (I myself have never seen anything larger than 2 TB).
By the way, MacPlus specialists will help you choose an SSD for your MacBook.
3. Install SSD in MacBook Pro or iMac instead of HDD and HDD via OptiBay
Note! When MacBook SSD must be installed instead of HDD, and not in Optibay. Only in this case will it be possible to achieve maximum speed Fusion Drive works.
Short instructions for installing OptiBay in MacBook Pro
1) Remove ten screws using a special Philips screwdriver:
2) Open the lid of the MacBook simply using your fingers:
3) Disconnect the battery cable using any thin-edged plastic tool:
4) Disconnect the AirPort/Bluetooth cable and camera cable. Remove them from their designated grooves:
5) Disconnect the antenna cable:
6) Remove these five screws:
7) Pull out the AirPort/Bluetooth node and subwoofer:
8) Disconnect the right speaker and hard drive cables:
9) Remove these three screws optical drive and pull it out:
10) Disconnect the drive cable and remove the mounting bracket screws:
11) Remove the two battery screws:
12) Remove the battery using the special lever:
13) Disconnect the battery cable:
14) Remove the two screws that hold the HDD:
15) Pull out the holding panel and pull out the disc using the special tab:
16) Disconnect the HDD cable:
17) Remove the screws from the HDD:
18) Remove the plastic spacer from the OptiBay:
19) Install the HDD into the OptiBay and return the spacer, secure the HDD into the OptiBay with screws and screw on the mounting bracket, install the OptiBay and SSD into the MacBook using the reverse sequence of steps:
Short instructions for installing OptiBay on iMac
1) Pull out protective glass screen using special suction cups:
2) Remove the eight screws that secure the screen to the case:
3) Lift the display slightly above the body:
4) Disconnect cables vertical sync, backlight, data cable and temperature sensor cable:
5) Pull the screen out of the case:
6) Remove the four optical drive screws:
7) Disconnect the thermal sensor and optical drive cables, and pull it out:
Important! There are a lot of cables in classic iMacs that have DVDs. Connectors and cables are fragile. And MacPlus often received broken computers after attempting to upgrade on its own. Of course, many people do it successfully themselves, but it’s still worth thinking about. Repairing such things is already more difficult.
11) Remove the plastic spacer from the OptiBay:
12) Install the HDD into the OptiBay and return the spacer, secure the SSD into the OptiBay with screws, install the OptiBay into the iMac using the reverse sequence of steps:
Keep in mind that you can also install an SSD on a new iMac and enable Fusion Drive on it. But in this case it is much more difficult to do, so it is better to turn to specialists.
4. Create a special bootable USB flash drive with the system
But before that: After installing the SSD, you need to check whether Trim is working by default, or whether it will have to be enabled manually.
And further: immediately after assembly, when you turn it on for the first time, you should reset the nvram parameters (keep it on when you turn it on alt+cmd+r+p until the greeting signal repeats), which can in some cases get rid of incomprehensible glitches.
First you need to download the distribution kit of the OS X El Capitan operating system. For the convenience of further manipulations, it is better to immediately rename it to something simple - Elcapitan. We do the same with a flash drive (8 GB and higher) - Disk. Next, open the terminal built into the system and enter a fairly simple command, where Disk is the name of the drive, and Elcapitan.app is the name of the distribution:
sudo /Applications/Elcapitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/DISK –applicationpath /Applications/Elcapitan.app –nointeraction
5. Back up your computer data
Of course, back up your data to your MacBook Pro or i Mac is better All done using standard OS X tools - using Time Machine. To do this you need to open system application platform and carry out the appropriate manipulations. We kept backups on idle time external hard disk, but you can also use a proprietary Time Capsule from Apple.
6. Fusion Drive setup - home stretch
To “clean” install the system and configure Fusion Drive, insert bootable USB flash drive into the computer and reboot it while holding down the Option key. We select the external media as bootable, and after this procedure open the terminal. To avoid mistakes, we immediately need to familiarize ourselves with the list of installed disks using the appropriate command:
diskutil list
Next, the Fusion Drive is created using the disk utility built into the system, to which we will issue all the necessary commands through the terminal. It is important not to mix up the disks. In this case Fusion is the name new group. After its creation, the utility will provide the name of the combined Logical Volume Group in the format 34WD6RDE-6564-F2R0-B7F4-FT35EERB. Here is the required terminal command:
diskutil cs create Fusion disk0 disk1
Finally, you need to format the resulting volume group in HFS+. It is in this case that the long set of letters and numbers that the utility assigned to the Logical Volume Group will be useful to us. As soon as the operation is completed, you need to continue installing the operating system, following the instructions of the installer - there is absolutely nothing complicated here. And here is the formatting command for the terminal:
diskutil cs createVolume 34WD6RDE-6564-F2R0-B7F4-FT35EERB jhfs+ Fusion 100%
Pros and cons of Fusion Drive
Pros:
- Cheaper than SSD, larger capacity;
- Fusion Drive can also be set up on fairly old Macs;
Minuses:
- If one drive breaks, it is very difficult to recover the data. The entire Fusion Drive dies;
- “Disassembling” Fusion Drive is a very complex procedure;
- Fusion Drive is still not as fast as SSD. He's slower;
- Fusion Drive is subject to all the "sores" of SSDs. For example, it is undesirable to use programs that constantly access the disk.
Not for the sake of stupidity - for the sake of necessity. Instead of output
After completing the system installation and restoring your own data backup Through Time Machine you can start enjoying much more productive system performance. Special disk tests show that Fusion Drive is almost as good as SSD in terms of write and read speed. Therefore, in this case, we saved money, but got the upgrade we wanted.
Fusion Drive is an innovative add-on storage solution that gives users the performance of flash memory combined with the capacity of a hard drive. It combines 128GB of flash memory with a standard 1TB or 3TB hard drive to create a single storage volume that allows you to intelligently manage files to optimize read and write speeds. Fusion Drive adapts to the way you use your iMac and automatically moves the files and apps you use most frequently to the flash drive, giving you more high performance and more fast access.
Apple Inc.
I read it and wanted something like this for myself. At first I thought it was a hybrid hard drive like this Seagate. But no.
Fusion Drive turned out to be not an innovative piece of hardware at all, but rather a software feature of Mountain Lion 10.8. It's something like RAID0 (with all the problems of RAID0), but with some additional benefits. In short, the system analyzes which files are used more often and puts them on the SSD. And the SSD capacity limitation is no longer annoying. Read more on the page of the one who took it all apart - Patrick Stein aka @jollyjinx
So if you have an SSD and HDD drives, you can try.
Before we begin:
1. You can also try to create Fusion Drive on external drives.
2. You can create a bootable Fusion Drive. You just need to perform all actions from the terminal console in the installation utility.
3.The information on the experimental disks will be destroyed. There will be no turning back.
Now about the main thing.
To create a Fusion Drive you need two drives. Not two partitions of one disk, not a partition and a disk, but TWO PHYSICAL disk. One SSD and one HDD. Fusion Drive works on any media, so the SSD manufacturer does not matter.
Also required is a Mountain Lion (installed or boot disk).
Stage 1: Create an array (CoreStorage)
Let's launch the terminal. Let me remind you that if you want to make a boot disk, the terminal must be launched from the installation program.
Enter
something like this will come out 
Select the disk identifiers to merge. In my case it is disk0 (which is SSD) and disk1 (which is HDD)
Check your selection. Once again. Sure? Double check!
Now let's move on to creating a CoreStorage logical disk.
enter in the terminal
where: UUID - what you copied (remembered, wrote down), Name - Partition name, Size - size in gigabytes.
As for the size - add up the sizes of your combined physical disks and subtract 6. At the end without a space, the letter g/
I got this line like this
hahaha, the photo with the cat was taken after much “persuasion” and “coercion”? :D because somehow he is completely indifferent :)))
and according to the post: I use Mac3, I need to try fusion, but I haven’t seen any advertisements: D
...and by the way, why are there scanlines in the background of the photo? :)
Here you can see what's inside the fusion
Hey... I looked and remembered that I forgot to post another video. post updated
Ksyusha
Cool stuff, I decided to buy a Gillette Fusion for a friend’s birthday, judging by your review, I could take the Mach3, but since the women said that the Fusion was a better shave, that means it’s true, so I’ll take it. You wrote funny about the cat, thanks for the review!
"fucking" cat... :)
CrashOver
In February I became the owner of a Fusion Power, before that it was just a Gillette sensor machine, a striking difference, especially when I got used to the vibration, it was generally super :) Congratulations on a good purchase. Girls, this is a good gift, everyone should take note! My beloved gave it to me :)
Hello Geektimes! Surely many continue to use MacBook Pro computers from 2011-2013 (those with an optical drive) and want to replace their device with a newer model. But if doing this is problematic for some reason (for example, due to crisis prices), you should not write off the “old man” - there is Alternative option, which will give the device a second wind. Its name is Fusion Drive.
First, a few words about what Fusion Drive is. In simple terms is a software RAID array with the ability to analyze the frequency of data usage. Files that are used more often are stored on the SSD, while the rest of the information is on the hard drive. When using data from HDD system transfers them to an SSD, so the operating speed becomes several times faster.
Old MacBooks had hard disks with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm, which is modern realities not impressive at all. Therefore, when installing Fusion Drive, which implies the presence of a solid-state drive, it would not be amiss to upgrade the HDD - ideally to 7200 rpm.
Many people believe that an SSD with Fusion Drive will not be of much use, and it is easier to put the system on a solid-state drive and store the rest of the information on the HDD. However, such a solution has a lot of disadvantages, and is there any significant speed loss with FD? Let's try to answer this question.
First, you need to decide on the choice of SSD. Since this post is on the OCZ blog... well, you get the idea :) Below is a comparison table of SSDs. Since we need a SATA 3 interface to connect the drive to the MacBook Pro (2012 model), RevoDrive 350 with PCIe Gen. 2 x8 immediately disappears. In terms of the combination of controller, endurance and maximum read/write, we like the Radeon R7 and Vector 180. By the way, the latter is more reliable due to the presence of PFM+, and the five-year warranty is impressive. To set up Fusion Drive, you can easily choose it, but a lot depends on your needs. If they are limited to studying, surfing the Internet and office applications, you can choose simpler models, but not lower than ARC 100.
As for capacity, it is better to take at least 240 GB. Although a large amount of data will be stored on the hard drive, you may need to temporarily leave large files on the SSD.
Let's say we have decided on the choice of SSD. Don’t rush to tear off the lid of your MacBook and install it - first you need to prepare your computer for such a serious upgrade. Before installing the SSD and setting up Fusion Drive, you must create a bootable drive with operating system(this can be OS X Yosemite or OS X El Capitan, but not younger than version 10.8.3). The maximum effect from installing Fusion Drive will be achieved if the system is installed “from scratch” on a ready-made SSD + HDD combination.
To create a bootable USB flash drive, you will need a drive with at least 8 GB free space and "Terminal". First, we download the operating system distribution and rename it for ease of entry - say, Elcapitan.
It’s also better to rename the flash drive itself (say, to DISK), after which you can safely open “Terminal” and enter next command: 
sudo /Applications/Elcapitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/DISK --applicationpath /Applications/Elcapitan.app --nointeraction
Where DISK is the name of our drive, and Elcapitan.app is the OS distribution. 
The process of deleting data on the drive will begin; you may be required to enter an administrator password. Copying the installation files may take some time, after which the message Done will indicate that a bootable USB flash drive with the operating system has been created. 
In the meantime, it’s time...yes, for a backup. Since we will be performing a “clean” installation, it is better to save all important files on an external drive. You can, of course, upload everything to the “clouds” if you have an extra terabyte lying around there. Backup You should not neglect it: otherwise you risk losing all your data.
Once the boot drive has been created, as well as the backups, you can proceed to SSD installation. It is done using Optibay by moving the hard drive in place of the optical drive (admit it, when was the last time you used one?), and the solid-state drive instead of the HDD.
Optibay
In the MacBook Pro 2012 they are located next to each other. Models with Retina display, unfortunately, they fly by - there’s simply not that much free space there.
Before performing any manipulations with the hardware, you must disconnect the battery from the system board.
Replacing an HDD with an SSD is not very difficult - just unscrew a couple of screws on the side plate and remove HDD and install the solid-state drive in its place, and then secure it with the same screws. To remove the optical drive, you need to disconnect five cables with extreme care. These are trains hard drive, Wi-Fi, camera, optical drive and speakers. Once again - we disconnect and connect everything very carefully - these cables really do not like bending, pulling and other rough things, and their replacement is quite expensive.
Only after this can you unscrew the screws that hold the optical drive and remove it.
Then we place our HDD (or a new one, if you followed our advice) into Optibay, “borrowing” a special cable from the optical drive, and install it in place of the drive.
Of course, this is a simplified manual, but it allows you to understand that there is nothing complicated or scary about installing an SSD + HDD combination. But before we configure Fusion Drive using them, let's check what speed characteristics our brand new SSD has in order to further compare this indicator with the results of Fusion Drive.
Let's use the BlackMagic DiskSpeedTest utility: 
427 MB/s write, 493 MB/s read – quite good result, which is as close as possible to the declared one. Well, let's see what the SSD will please us with after setting up FD.
Let's move directly to setting up Fusion Drive. To do this, insert a bootable USB flash drive and turn on the laptop while holding down the Option key. Select the connected drive as bootable, and then open the terminal.
First, you need to view the list of installed disks using the command below - it is very important not to make mistakes here.
Diskutil list
For example, the SSD may be disk0, and the HDD may be disk2. Here everything depends on the specific disk configuration. 
Next, the FD is created using the diskutil disk utility, which uses the CoreStorage parameter. Single group tops are created by entering this command:
Diskutil cs create Fusion disk0 disk1
It is important not to mix up the disks. In our case, Fusion is the name of the new group. After its creation, the utility will provide the name of the combined volume group - Logical Volume Group, in this format:
Diskutil cs createVolume 34WD6RDE-6564-F2R0-B7F4-FT35EERB jhfs+ Fusion 100%
Once the operation is completed, you can continue installing the system. In the future, the necessary files can be transferred from Time Machine, another external storage or “clouds” - depending on which backup method you chose.
It's time to return to the main question - will there be a loss of speed after installing Fusion Drive? Let's make a control measurement. 
It can be seen that, although there are losses, they are small - they are compensated by the ease of use of Fusion Drive. Instead of
install a separate SSD in the MacBook Pro and connect external HDD, we get a complete working solution.
If on previous versions OS X there was a possibility of losing some data and incorrect SSD operation, then starting with Mavericks it was minimized. Everything also works fine with OS X El Capitan.
So, instead of selling your old Mac, install Fusion Drive - you'll see, it won't disappoint.
Good weekend!
Fair, not overpriced and not underestimated. There should be prices on the Service website. Necessarily! without asterisks, clear and detailed, where technically possible - as accurate and concise as possible.
If spare parts are available, up to 85% of complex repairs can be completed in 1-2 days. Modular repairs require much less time. The website shows the approximate duration of any repair.
Warranty and responsibility
A guarantee must be given for any repairs. Everything is described on the website and in the documents. The guarantee is self-confidence and respect for you. A 3-6 month warranty is good and sufficient. It is needed to check quality and hidden defects that cannot be detected immediately. You see honest and realistic terms (not 3 years), you can be sure that they will help you.
Half the battle is Apple repair- this is the quality and reliability of spare parts, so good service works with suppliers directly, there are always several reliable channels and your own warehouse with proven spare parts current models so that you don't have to waste extra time.
Free diagnostics
This is very important and has already become a rule of good manners for service center. Diagnostics is the most difficult and important part of the repair, but you don't have to pay a penny for it, even if you don't repair the device based on its results.
Service repairs and delivery
Good service We value your time, which is why we offer free shipping. And for the same reason, repairs are carried out only in the workshop of a service center: they can be done correctly and according to technology only in a prepared place.
Convenient schedule
If the Service works for you, and not for itself, then it is always open! absolutely. The schedule should be convenient to fit in before and after work. Good service works on weekends and holidays. We are waiting for you and working on your devices every day: 9:00 - 21:00
The reputation of professionals consists of several points
Company age and experience
Reliable and experienced service has been known for a long time.
If a company has been on the market for many years and has managed to establish itself as an expert, people turn to it, write about it, and recommend it. We know what we are talking about, since 98% of incoming devices in the service center are restored.
Other service centers trust us and refer complex cases to us.
How many masters in areas
If there are always several engineers waiting for you for each type of equipment, you can be sure:
1. there will be no queue (or it will be minimal) - your device will be taken care of right away.
2. you give your Macbook for repair to an expert in the field of Mac repairs. He knows all the secrets of these devices
Technical literacy
If you ask a question, a specialist should answer it as accurately as possible.
So that you can imagine what exactly you need.
They will try to solve the problem. In most cases, from the description you can understand what happened and how to fix the problem.
