Apple's New Fusion Drive Works on Older Macs
One of the interesting additions to Apple's iMac and Mac mini lines announced last week is Fusion Drive, a hybrid storage system that combines a 128 GB solid-state drive (SSD) with a 1 TB or 3 TB traditional hard drive into a single volume to offer the best of both worlds in terms of performance and storage space. Apple's software automatically manages the combined volume, placing the core system and other frequently used applications and files on the solid-state drive for faster access while keeping lower-priority applications and data on the traditional hard drive.
Mac developer Patrick Stein has been toying with his own Mac Pro setup and has managed to build his own Fusion Drive using command line tools. Stein configured an internal solid-state drive and a USB-attached traditional hard drive on his system and was able to combine them into a single logical volume as used for Fusion Drive.
Attached are a 120GB SSD (disk1) and a 750GB HDD (disk7) to my Mac. I attached the SSD via SATA to be sure that the system could figure out that it’s a SSD via SMART. The HDD is attached via USB. USB I chose to clearly see a difference in speed.
Stein then proceeded to test the setup, writing data first to the SSD and then to the traditional hard drive once the SSD had filled up. By preferentially accessing data that had initially been written to the traditional hard drive, Stein was able to watch as the data was automatically transferred to the SSD for faster access. Upon stopping the process, the system automatically pushed the data back to the traditional hard drive, and in one final step Stein began accessing the data once more and after about an hour was able to see it pulled back onto the SSD.
In several follow-up Tumblr posts, Stein details further explorations into how Fusion Drive works, noting that he was able to use not only the default HFS+ file system for OS X with it, but also ZFS. All of Stein's work was performed with a standard installation of OS X 10.8.2.
Popular Stories
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
Apple will finally deliver the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sometime this year, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong (via @jukanlosreve).
The analyst expects both the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 to arrive this year (likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, if previous launches are anything to go by), according to his latest product roadmap shared with...
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements.
While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way.
By the time the ...
Apple's Terminal app is getting a visual refresh in macOS Tahoe, and it's the first notable design update since the command-line tool debuted.
The updated Terminal will support 24-bit color and Powerline fonts, according to Apple's State of the Platforms presentation at WWDC25. The app will also adopt the new Liquid Glass aesthetic with redesigned themes that align with macOS 26's broader...
Apple this week revealed that iOS 26 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer.
That means that iOS 18 is the end of the road for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, which were all released in 2018. However, those devices will continue to receive security updates for at least a few more years.
iOS 26 is compatible with the following iPhone models:
iPhone 16e
iPhone...
With iOS 26, Apple has made some additions to the iPhone Lock Screen that aim to make it more customizable than ever.
Of course, things can always change before the software makes its way to the general iPhone-owning public, but here are five new things iOS 26 can do on the Lock Screen as of the current developer beta.
Widgets Top or Bottom
In iOS 18, the row of widgets on your Lock...
Apple may launch the AirPods Pro 3 in 2026, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong, contradicting earlier predictions of a much sooner release.
Pu's Apple product timeline (via @jukanlosreve) comes as a bit of a surprise. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said in February that new AirPods with heart rate monitoring were "months away," suggesting a late 2025 launch at the earliest....