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Made a correction to a mistaken assumption
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James Brickley
James Brickley
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The built-in 120GB is part of the Fusion drive. A Fusion drive is a software solution where two physical disks are joined as one drive. If either disk fails you can lose all data. Sounds like your 3TB HDD experienced a fault which is not unusual after 6 years of life. The 120GB SSD is soldered to the system board so that cannot be replacedis soldered to the system board so that cannot be replaced It is replaceable. Just on the backside of the main system board and not as easily accessible like the HDD. Fusion originally appeared using JHFS+ file system and CoreStorage containers to create the Fusion. When Apple announced it, I was able to implement Fusion on a Mac Pro 2010 by using the command line diskutil. With the new APFS and APFS Containers Fusion still works under Mojave and up.

Fusion is vulnerable to losing all data if either the SSD or HDD fails. Since you now have two SSD's it doesn't make sense to combine the two for the same reason.

Install macOS and everything else onto the new larger SSD that you installed. Here's a few ideas on how to use that 120GB Apple SSD. You should format the 120GB drive.

  • Keep the drive as a second disk use it for scratch space. Some applications can benefit from this such as Adobe Photoshop. Having a different disk on a different controller can improve performance while the main disk is busy.
  • Mount the drive to a folder in your Home folder to make it easily accessible. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/291154/382818
  • I wouldn't trust that Apple SSD as it's 6 years old so don't put anything on it you don't mind losing if it suddenly decides to fail. SSD's have a limit on the number of writes and it's been running for 6 years under Fusion. Fusion puts the most frequently used files on the SSD so it likely that disk has been worked rather hard.
  • The Apple SSD can be replaced and there is the IFIXIT teardown for that model. The process is not too bad if you are adventurous. It is a PCIe drive not an NVMe drive.

The built-in 120GB is part of the Fusion drive. A Fusion drive is a software solution where two physical disks are joined as one drive. If either disk fails you can lose all data. Sounds like your 3TB HDD experienced a fault which is not unusual after 6 years of life. The 120GB SSD is soldered to the system board so that cannot be replaced. Fusion originally appeared using JHFS+ file system and CoreStorage containers to create the Fusion. When Apple announced it, I was able to implement Fusion on a Mac Pro 2010 by using the command line diskutil. With the new APFS and APFS Containers Fusion still works under Mojave and up.

Fusion is vulnerable to losing all data if either the SSD or HDD fails. Since you now have two SSD's it doesn't make sense to combine the two for the same reason.

Install macOS and everything else onto the new larger SSD that you installed. Here's a few ideas on how to use that 120GB Apple SSD. You should format the 120GB drive.

  • Keep the drive as a second disk use it for scratch space. Some applications can benefit from this such as Adobe Photoshop. Having a different disk on a different controller can improve performance while the main disk is busy.
  • Mount the drive to a folder in your Home folder to make it easily accessible. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/291154/382818
  • I wouldn't trust that Apple SSD as it's 6 years old so don't put anything on it you don't mind losing if it suddenly decides to fail. SSD's have a limit on the number of writes and it's been running for 6 years under Fusion. Fusion puts the most frequently used files on the SSD so it likely that disk has been worked rather hard.

The built-in 120GB is part of the Fusion drive. A Fusion drive is a software solution where two physical disks are joined as one drive. If either disk fails you can lose all data. Sounds like your 3TB HDD experienced a fault which is not unusual after 6 years of life. The 120GB SSD is soldered to the system board so that cannot be replaced It is replaceable. Just on the backside of the main system board and not as easily accessible like the HDD. Fusion originally appeared using JHFS+ file system and CoreStorage containers to create the Fusion. When Apple announced it, I was able to implement Fusion on a Mac Pro 2010 by using the command line diskutil. With the new APFS and APFS Containers Fusion still works under Mojave and up.

Fusion is vulnerable to losing all data if either the SSD or HDD fails. Since you now have two SSD's it doesn't make sense to combine the two for the same reason.

Install macOS and everything else onto the new larger SSD that you installed. Here's a few ideas on how to use that 120GB Apple SSD. You should format the 120GB drive.

  • Keep the drive as a second disk use it for scratch space. Some applications can benefit from this such as Adobe Photoshop. Having a different disk on a different controller can improve performance while the main disk is busy.
  • Mount the drive to a folder in your Home folder to make it easily accessible. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/291154/382818
  • I wouldn't trust that Apple SSD as it's 6 years old so don't put anything on it you don't mind losing if it suddenly decides to fail. SSD's have a limit on the number of writes and it's been running for 6 years under Fusion. Fusion puts the most frequently used files on the SSD so it likely that disk has been worked rather hard.
  • The Apple SSD can be replaced and there is the IFIXIT teardown for that model. The process is not too bad if you are adventurous. It is a PCIe drive not an NVMe drive.
Source Link
James Brickley
James Brickley
  • 2.3k
  • 5
  • 9

The built-in 120GB is part of the Fusion drive. A Fusion drive is a software solution where two physical disks are joined as one drive. If either disk fails you can lose all data. Sounds like your 3TB HDD experienced a fault which is not unusual after 6 years of life. The 120GB SSD is soldered to the system board so that cannot be replaced. Fusion originally appeared using JHFS+ file system and CoreStorage containers to create the Fusion. When Apple announced it, I was able to implement Fusion on a Mac Pro 2010 by using the command line diskutil. With the new APFS and APFS Containers Fusion still works under Mojave and up.

Fusion is vulnerable to losing all data if either the SSD or HDD fails. Since you now have two SSD's it doesn't make sense to combine the two for the same reason.

Install macOS and everything else onto the new larger SSD that you installed. Here's a few ideas on how to use that 120GB Apple SSD. You should format the 120GB drive.

  • Keep the drive as a second disk use it for scratch space. Some applications can benefit from this such as Adobe Photoshop. Having a different disk on a different controller can improve performance while the main disk is busy.
  • Mount the drive to a folder in your Home folder to make it easily accessible. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/291154/382818
  • I wouldn't trust that Apple SSD as it's 6 years old so don't put anything on it you don't mind losing if it suddenly decides to fail. SSD's have a limit on the number of writes and it's been running for 6 years under Fusion. Fusion puts the most frequently used files on the SSD so it likely that disk has been worked rather hard.