My Fusion Drive Partitioning Seems Wrong/Strange/Wonky
See below for diskutil list
of my 3TB fusion drive (iMac 27" late 2014) running High Sierra: I assume disk0
is the HD and disk1
is the SSD, and disk2
is the virtual combo that is mounted as my "HD". But I've got a 2 questions:
-
Why does
disk0
have twoApple_CoreStorage
partitions? I'd like to do a clean install of Mojave for my upgrade, and if the partitioning is wrong, how do I fix? I assume erasing the disk as part of the upgrade won't change the partitioning. And partitions 2 and 4 are not adjacent, so not clear how I'd merge. And Disk Utility just shows a single 3.1TB drive. Or should I not care? -
When I mount and look at the EFI partitions on Disk0 and Disk1, I just see an Apple sub-directory... no Windows/Microsoft anything. And the Startup Disk Utility also only shows "Macintosh HD / MacOS 10.3.6" as an option. But when I boot up holding down Option key, I see a Windows boot option. Where is this boot option hiding?
**/dev/disk0 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER** 0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 2.2 TB disk0s2 3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.1 MB disk0s3 4: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 801.4 GB disk0s4 5: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s5 **/dev/disk1 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER** 0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk1 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1 2: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 121.0 GB disk1s2 3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk1s3 **/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER** 0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD +3.1 TB disk2 Logical Volume on disk1s2, disk0s2, ... F8575B66-EA8C-4260-96E8-7FEFD183EFC3 Unencrypted Fusion Drive
CoreStorage Logical Volume Groups | +-- Logical Vol Group 8AAC.. ===== Name: Macintosh HD Size: 3.1 TB | +- Phys Vol 1ADA.. | Index: 0 | Disk: disk1s2 | Size: 121.0 GB +- Phys Vol 37D1.. | Index: 1 | Disk: disk0s2 | Size: 2.2 TB +- Phys Vol CFB5... | Index: 2 | Disk: disk0s4 | Size: 801.4 GB +- Logical Vol Family A061.. --- | | +- Logical Vol F857.. | Disk: disk2 | Size (Tot): 3.1 TB | Revertible: No | LV Name: Macintosh HD | Volume Name: Macintosh HD | Content Hint: Apple_HFS LVG | Type: Fusion, Sparse
Solution 1:
This procedure is going to get you back to a "factory fresh" system where your 128GB SSD and 3TB (spinning) HDD are configured as a Fusion Drive. Basically, we're going to:
- Delete all partitions off all the physical drives
- Create the Fusion Drive
- Install macOS
Before you begin, ensure that you have
- all necessary backups.
- a bootable USB installer
- WiFi and a working Internet connection (if you want to use Internet Recovery)
Erase the Disks
Using a bootable USB macOS installer, boot up then go into Terminal and issue the following commands:
$ diskutil partitionDisk disk0 1 GPT HFS+ MacSSD 100%
$ diskutil partitionDisk disk1 1 GPT HFS+ MacHDD 100%
Verify that the disks are wiped clean by issuing the command
$ diskutil list
You should see two disks with a single partition each.
Create the Fusion Drive
Create the Logical Volume Group
Next create a logical volume group by "combining" the two drives with the following command
$ diskutil coreStorage create <LogicalVolumeGroupName> /dev/disk1 /dev/disk2
You can use any descriptive name for the group. Ex: iMacLVG
When the process has finished, it will output some status information including the logical volume group UUID like below:
Core Storage LVG UUID: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Copy that number to your clipboard. You will need it for the next command.
Create the Logical Volume
Issue the command
$ diskutil coreStorage createVolume lvgUUID type name size
Where...
-
lvgUUID
= the UUID you copied from the last step -
type
= the format you want to you. -
name
= the name of the Volume. -
size
= how big you want to make the volume. Valid entries are in bytes (Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera, Peta, etc.) and percentage (%)
So, to make a volume that spans the whole logical volume in HFS+ use the following example:
$ diskutil coreStorage createVolume XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXX HFS+ "iMac HD" 100%
Once it's done, you've got a clean volume on which to install macOS. Issue the command to verify that you've got 3 disks: 2 physical and 1 logical.
Install macOS
Exit Terminal and complete the macOS installation. Restore your data by using the Data Migration Tool if necessary.