

- 2017 IMAC FUSION DRIVE VS SSD HOW TO
- 2017 IMAC FUSION DRIVE VS SSD UPGRADE
- 2017 IMAC FUSION DRIVE VS SSD MAC
So-when the SSD is perfect-your Mac boots up, but the hard drive may not be visible in Disk Utility or may not show up in Storage under System Information. Or, one of the two storage devices in the fusion drive may turn inaccessible due to file system corruption or drive failure. However, sometimes, the fusion drive won’t show up as a single entity in Finder and appear as two separate drives due to splitting. Plus, the seamless integration (fusion) of the two drives as a single logical volume lets you work on your Mac smoothly. You get the benefit of SSD that is quick in loading macOS and HDD that has several gigabytes of storage space.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader David.IMac and Mac mini that uses a fusion drive technology that provides a better user experience within your means. To avoid this, you can eject the internal drive after starting up, or if you’re sure you’ve made a complete backup of it (or more than one), delete your data from it, leaving just the system to boot into in case of an emergency. The system on your internal drive will remain in place, however, and that can cause problems if one of your apps or you accidentally select a file from the internal drive instead of the fresher one on your external SSD. With any method you choose above, when it’s all complete, you open the Startup Disk preference pane, select the SSD as the startup volume, and then can restart with it as your main system. Restart with your SSD and clean up the startup volume If you use Disk Utility follow the instructions in this article, but only restore the Data volume of your internal drive to the Data volume of the external drive. (You may need to restart and hold down the Option key to select the startup drive.)įollowing a successful Big Sur installation, you can use an up-to-date Time Machine backup, Carbon Copy Cloner, or Disk Utility to copy your data. Then restart again with your internal system volume. You should test that the installation was successful by restarting with the external SSD, which will have no user data on it. Follow instructions in that app for that special operation.

After finishing installing Big Sur, open the Startup Disk preference pane and select your internal drive, then click Restart so you can finish the copying.
2017 IMAC FUSION DRIVE VS SSD HOW TO
Here are the instructions on how to set up an external SSD as the startup drive. For $200 to $300, you can purchase a high-performance, well-reviewed SSD that will boost your speed, sometimes by such a high factor it may seem like a new Mac. And the cost of 1TB SSDs has finally fallen enough that it’s absolutely reasonable to consider them rather than swapping out your computer entirely. The data rates of either standard are fast enough with an SSD to offer a significant improvement.
2017 IMAC FUSION DRIVE VS SSD UPGRADE
Since most Macs of the Fusion drive era don’t allow a drive upgrade with ease-or, in the case of an iMac, require huge and careful effort to swap out the drive-consider using an external SSD that connects via USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3.
