Talking to a few acquaintances, I realised that many people have started to appreciate the benefits of having an SSD in their Mac, both in terms of performance and power consumption, and would be keen to switch to this technology to speed up their computer, perhaps combined with Fusion Drive — were it not for the fact that, partly out of caution but mainly so as not to risk voiding the warranty, they don’t feel comfortable opening up their brand-new iMac or Mac mini.
However, there is a second option for more recent Macs with a USB 3.0 port: creating a Fusion Drive from the internal mechanical disk and an external USB 3.0 SSD. This avoids having to buy Apple’s expensive €250 Fusion Drive option at the time of ordering, or opening the Mac and voiding the warranty.
No special knowledge or hacking is required: simply buy the LaCie SSD Porsche Design Slim P’9223, a 120GB external SSD with a USB connection, which you can find on Amazon for around €160 including shipping, and follow a simple procedure.
As well as looking great next to the Mac, LaCie’s elegant, slim enclosure uses its USB 3.0 connection to take full advantage of the SATA III 6Gbit/s solid-state drive, delivering performance comparable to an internal SSD.
Once you have connected the LaCie disk to your Mac, you can create the Fusion Drive by following the instructions in this article: Enabling Fusion Drive on “older” Macs too.
All of this is fairly straightforward and certainly cheaper than Apple’s expensive option, but it comes with a small drawback: the external disk must always remain connected to the Mac for the system to boot.
Enjoy!
