How to install or port data to a Fusion / Hybrid / SSHD drive

Solution 1:

No, there is nothing special you need to do.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, the way that hybrid drives work is that they monitor the data being read from the drive and, over time, they identify what files are regularly read from the drive. The drive then caches the most frequently accessed files to the high speed NAND flash memory.

The net result is that hybrid hard drives blend HDD capacity with SSD speeds.

A couple of years ago I actually installed a 1TB Seagate hybrid drive into a 15" MacBook Pro (late 2008) model and the improvement was amazing. Well worth it in my situation!

In terms of how you go about doing this, it's really a matter of personal choice. I've used Carbon Copy Cloner, Time Machine and others. In recent years I've just used Time Machine to manage all my backups and then restore data that way. I also use two Time Machine backup drives for each computer.

Hope this helps.

Solution 2:

Strictly speaking, this won't be a Fusion drive as far as OS X 10.8 or 10.10 are concerned. The operating system will see the new part as a single drive, and Seagate's firmware will do all the "Fusion" parts on its own. This should be as simple as your previous storage upgrades.