Apple bank on the Fusion thrust for old age as an affordable mediate option between a slow but low-priced eminent - capacity tough disk private road and a dissipated but expensive high - capacity SSD . The Fusion campaign pairs an SSD with very few gigabytes with a much larger HDD . macOS do by the Fusion drive as one logical gimmick , displaying it as a single drive in the Finder . But behind the scenes , it mechanically optimizes file storage , so the most oftentimes accessed files are shifted over sentence to your SSD , while the HDD nurse less - used one . This is why your Fusion drive Mac can start up quickly , but still be a clout when using Photoshop to edit large paradigm .
This seamless and invisible direction is nothing like get two freestanding movement — it ’s a stitched - together hybrid . As a final result , you ca n’t separate the two just by upgrade one part without a lot of fancy interactions . And most Macs with Fusion drives have an SSD installed that is difficult to access or is make into the motherboard ; the HDD is often quite hard to get at and switch out , or may be out of the question to move out .
If your plan is to convert out either or both parts , however , start by cloning your Fusion drive to an external drive usingDisk usefulness , Shirt Pocket’sSuperDuper , or Bombich Software’sCarbon Copy Clonerwith Catalina or earlier interlingual rendition of macOS . Big Sur adds complexity to cloning ; readthis post at Bombich Softwareandthis at Shirt Pocketfor more on the issue . ( Macs with Apple ’s M1 silicon ca n’t be cloned amply yet , but no M1 Mac hail with a Fusion driving force . )
Appleoffers a detailed guideon splitting and fix Fusion parkway that should avail if you want to knit back together one or two upgraded components .
This Mac 911 article is in reaction to a doubtfulness submitted by Macworld reader John .
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