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Can you move DIY Fusion drives from one Mac mini to another and expect it to work?
- Thread starter NazgulRR
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To be honest I don't use fusion so I can't give a 100% answer but if it were me and the new setup had both an SSD and a HDD in it I would ensure I had both a Time Machine backup AND a clone done by either CCC or Super Duper.
My guess is "no." I once moved a HDD from a MacBook Pro to a MacBook. When I tried to boot, I got an error saying something about the system drive not matching the computer model. I assumed that, when you install OS X, it stores information about the particular computer. I had to do a clean installation of OS X and restore from my TMB. That was several versions of OS X ago, though,so you might give it a try if you're curious.
No, you usually can happily switch the drives between mac models, they just work. There must be something special with your installation that prevented switching. What you observed is highly unusual.
Hi,
I want to do the same thing with a MacBook Pro. Have you ever done it with your Mac mini? What was your experience with that?
Thank you
Michael
Personally, I'd shy away from Fusion drives at this point. With fusion, you're relying on two drives - which doubles your chances of failure (generally speaking).
2TB SSD drives are only about $200 now. You'll get better speeds and better resiliency.
2TB SSD drives are only about $200 now. You'll get better speeds and better resiliency.
You are right, in most cases...
In my case this is not an option because the old Macbook from my stepmom crashed and she want's to get her data back. Guess what... she has no backup.
So I want to put the old drives into the same Macbook Model and try to recover it. So I will see if it works. I'm just waiting for the new Macbook from eBay and then I will give it a try.(no backup, no mercy)
Hi Michael.
I have not done it. Still on the Mac Mini 2009 as have not upgraded yet.
Please report back.
Hi,
I just got the Macbook from eBay today. In Detail both devices are MacBook Pro 13" from Mid 2010. In the cracked one there was a fusion drive with the original 250GB HDD from Apple and a 120GB SSD from Samsung. Latest possible macOS was installed. In this case macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
So first of all I installed a fresh copy of High Sierra on the eBay Macbook just because to have the same EFI Firmware on both devices. Then I replaced the HDD and the DVD-ROM with the Fusion Drive and what can I say: "It just works"
I don't have to do anything. Just boot up and logged in.
I don't know if this is possible with different devices but with the same model it works.
Hope this will help some of you!
Cheers
Michael
Even better it works if you take the drives from the machine and put USB interfaces on them and attach them to a different Mac... (thus recovering another un-backed up machine_...