MacFormat UK – June 2019

(Dana P.) #1
macformat.com @macformat JUNE 2019 | MACFORMAT | 33

Can’t justify a big SSD upgrade? This option costs as little as £37


Make your own Fusion Drive


uying a 500GB or larger SSD can cost upwards
of £100, but making your own Fusion Drive
remains an option on a tight budget. We suggest
using a StarTech USB enclosure (£19, bit.ly/mffdus)
and no smaller than a 120GB SSD (£18, bit.ly/mffdssd).
Follow the steps at bit.ly/macindsk, using an 8GB USB
thumb drive that you’re happy to erase to create a macOS
install disk. You may need this as a fallback to reinstall
macOS or restore a Time Machine backup of your complete
system. Hold å at startup if you need to boot from it.


  1. Prepare your Mac
    Don’t proceed until you’ve got a complete backup of your Mac’s
    internal storage, Back up macOS and your files using Time
    Machine for ease at the end of this process. Connect your SSD
    and detach all other external drives to protect against accidental
    erasure. Then start up in macOS Recovery – see bit.ly/mfrcvry.

  2. Get a list of disks
    Choose Utilities > Terminal, type diskutil list and press ® for a
    list of partitions on connected disks. Partitions are grouped by
    disk. Refer to the Size column to work out which disk is a match
    for the SSD you’ve connected. In our case, its identifier is disk2.

  3. Identify target partitions
    To avoid wiping the partitions that contain the Recovery system
    and (if you use it) Windows in Boot Camp, use the Name column
    to look up the partition where macOS is installed and make a
    note of what’s listed under Identifier in that row. For us, disk0s2.

  4. Group the partitions
    Ty p e diskutil cs create Fusion, then a space, the identifier
    of your SSD, another space, then the identifier of the partition
    for your existing macOS installation. Press ® to create a logical
    volume group that identifies storage your Fusion Drive will use.

  5. Gather more information
    Ty p e diskutil cs list and press ® for a summary of what was
    just created. Select the long code to the right of ‘+-- Logical
    Volume Group’ and press ç+C. Note the free space number.

  6. Turn it into usable space
    Ty p e diskutil cs createVolume and a space. Press ç+V to
    paste the long code. Add a space, type jhfs+ “Macintosh FD”
    then a space. Divide the free space number by 1,000,000,000
    and type the result to three decimal places, then g. Press ®.
    Wait till you see ‘Finished CoreStorage operation’ and you
    can type again, then quit Terminal. Your Fusion Drive is ready
    for a fresh copy of macOS or your Time Machine backup, using
    the options in Recovery’s menu or your bootable USB installer.


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