How To Erase Fusion Drive on Your Mac

Factory Resetting an iMac Fusion Drive

To factory reset your iMac Fusion Drive, you will need to start up from macOS Recovery. To do this, turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold Command-R. Once you see the macOS utility window, choose Utilities > Terminal from the menu bar. In the Terminal window, type diskutil resetFusion and press Return. You will then need to follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process. It is important to note that this process will erase all data from your drive, so make sure to back up any important information before proceeding.

Wiping a Mac with a Fusion Drive

To wipe your Mac with a Fusion Drive, you will need to start your Mac in Recovery Mode. Once the Recovery Mode menu appears, open Disk Utility. In the top-left corner of Disk Utility, click the View dropdown and select Show All Devices. Select Container disk 2 in the sidebar and click the Erase icon in the toolbar.

Choose a name for your drive, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as your Format, choose a Scheme of either GUID Partition Map or Apple Partition Map, and then click Erase. Once finished, quit Disk Utility and select Reinstall macOS from the Recovery Mode menu to reinstall macOS on your Mac.

Erasing a Hard Drive on a Mac

To force your Mac to erase a hard drive, you will need to perform a force restart by holding down the Command and R keys on your keyboard at the same time as soon as you hear the Mac tone indicating a reboot. After the macOS Utilities screen appears, click on Disk Utility and select your Mac’s system drive, usually named Macintosh HD. Finally, click on Erase to begin erasing the hard drive.

Erasing a Disk on a Mac: Troubleshooting Issues

It’s not possible to erase the disk you are currently running from, which is why the Erase button in Disk Utility is grayed out. To format the Mac startup disk, you will need to boot into Mac Recovery mode. This can be done by restarting your Mac and holding down Command + R until you see the Apple logo appear on your screen. Once you have booted into Mac Recovery mode, open Disk Utility from the utility menu and select your disk from the left side of the window. You should then be able to click Erase to reformat it.

What is a Fusion Drive?

A Fusion Drive is a storage solution that combines the speed of a solid-state drive (SSD) with the capacity of a hard drive (HD). It works by automatically moving frequently used data from the HD to the SSD so that data can be accessed faster. This helps improve overall system performance and responsiveness, as well as providing extra storage space. The Fusion Drive was first introduced in 2012 and is available in some models of the iMac and Mac mini.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Fusion Drive is a great storage option for iMac and Mac Mini computers that combines the advantages of a hard drive and flash storage into one single volume. This helps to improve performance and storage capacity, allowing users to get more out of their system. However, if the Fusion Drive appears as two drives instead of one in the Finder, it is no longer working as a Fusion Drive. In this case, it is necessary to reset the Fusion Drive using the diskutil resetFusion command in Terminal or by erasing the Container disk 2 through Disk Utility.