Mac - how best to reset & transfer to a fusion drive

dragonfly

dragonfly

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Des
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I'm in the process of moving from an old C2D machine to a newer (but used) one which comes with a 3TB fusion. Currently mine has a separate SSD for OS & other apps with a second HDD for storage. I have a few questions that I hope you can help clarify.

1) It'd appear that doing a clean install / configuring a fusion isn't as straight forward as a standard HDD. How do I know, specifically how do I check that the new machine (a) has been correctly reset, or even (b) has a fusion drive? - as I think it'll show as a single volume??

2) what is the best way to transfer across? I have a ghost backup of the SSD. Since fusion is set up differently, I presume I'd have to install individual apps from scratch or is there a more logical approach?

3) I presume standard storage data can be transferred via drag & drop as per normal?

Sorry for the dumb questions but have never used one before so not 100% about how best to approach. TIA for your advise/help.
 
Hi Des

You can check for a Fusion drive by using the Terminal command diskutil cs list
That should show 1 logical volume group made up of 2 physical volumes.
If you don't want to mess about in Terminal, you can look in System Information via the apple logo on the menu which should show 2 SATA devices.

The best way to transfer is using Migration Assistant. If you can put both machines on a Gigabit Ethernet wired network, that's the best option. Otherwise you can use Transfer mode (hold T key down when switching on the old machine) and a Firewire or Thunderbolt cable to connect the machines together. The other alternative is to back up to Time Machine and then use the TM backup with Migration Assistant.

Hopefully your user folder is on the old machine's SSD, that should migrate with the apps. The rest of the data can be copied with drag/drop.
 
I should have added that it is vitally important to have a backup of your machine when using Fusion Drive - if something goes wrong, then you will most likely have to erase the whole thing and restore from backup. But then you'll have a backup anyway won't you? ;)
 
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