DIY Fusion Drive For Macs Is Complex

If your favorite part of the Apple event where the new and crazy thin iMac computers were unveiled was the Fusion Drive combining a traditional hard drive with flash storage, you might wonder if you can get the technology inside your existing Mac computer. Apparently, you can, but it's not exactly easy. You can roll your own Fusion Drive following some instructions available online.

The full DIY instructions available to create your own Fusion drive using technology already built into OS X Lion and up, and your own storage drives. Instructions are available on jollyjinx tumblr. The instructions on tumblr are quite heady, so it will help to be computer hardware and programming geek.

In a nutshell, the DIY set up allows the first megabyte of data to be read from the SSD and then the rest of the data is read from the HDD. That ability combines the best of both worlds giving users the speed of a SSD combined with the high storage capacity of the average traditional hard drive.

If you want to know more specifically about the Fusion Drive technology, including how it works at Ars Technica Of has some additional insight. Apple's Fusion Drive tech gives Mac users a 128 GB SSD and a larger hard drive ranging from 1 to 3 TB of capacity. Software on the Mac computer keeps track of which files and applications are used frequently and physically moves those files and applications from the hard drive to the faster SSD to improve system performance. Files and applications that are used frequently that reside on the SSD are in turn moved back to the HDD. This all happens automatically, and is rather impressive. If you manage to cobble together your own DIY Fusion Drive, let us know.

[via TUAW]