How To Migrate From Fusion Drive Configuration To A Single SSD Or HDD Using Backup/Restore.

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Process of migration consists of three steps:

Preparing backup for migration.
Preparing recovery media.
Restoring backup to new physical Volume.

Backing up a Fusion Drive Configuration (SSD + HDD)

The main rule is to exclude Core Storage Physical Volumes from backup. For Fusion Drives there should be no less than two Physical Volumes.

Start the Backup Wizard by selecting the Backup and Restore tab at the top of the HDM for Mac interace, then clicking Create new Archive.
Please make sure you select all service partitions (Boot OS X, EFI, Recovery) and a Core Storage Logical Volume, while removing Core Storage Physical Volumes from the process. In our example it’s an SSD and a traditional spinning platter HDD.
Click the arrow icon to specify a backup destination. HDM for Mac can store back up images to a local volume, external storage, or a network share. We highly recommend you to use either an externally connected disk (USB, ThunderBolt, FireWire) or a network share. Please take into account the values of the parameters “Available space” and “Estimated backup size” – if the backup size exceeds the available storage space, the operation won’t proceed. Don’t forget to define a catchy file name for the backup image and add a description if necessary.
That’s all. Click Backup to initiate the operation. The time to complete the operation may take quite a while, depening on the amount of data to process.
Once the backup image is created, you can see its contents. Please note, there are two blocks of free space in place of the Core Storage Physical Volumes that were excluded from the backup.

Preparing Recovery Media

Recovery Media can help you boot your Mac into Recovery Environment to get access to your hard disk for maintenance or recovery purposes. It includes a standard set of utilities (terminal, reinstall OS X tool, etc.) and the Hard Disk Manager application. HDM for Mac includes a special wizard that will guide you through the process of creating the media onto either a USB flash stick or external disk.

Start the Create Recovery Media Wizard by selecting from the main menu: Wizards > Create Recovery Media.
Choose a flash stick or external disk from the list of available storage devices. Please note that all data on this device will be deleted. You may add content back to the device after recovery media is created.
Confirm erasing of the disk.
The entire process takes a couple of minutes.
Once completed, you will be prompted to restart your Mac from the recently created media. If you prefer not to proceed at this moment, click Don’t restart.
To start up the computer from the boot media later you will need to hold the Option (alt) key during the system restart until the Startup Manager appears, then select the “HDM Recovery” as the boot source. Alternatively, you can use the Startup Disk System Preferences.

Restoring a Core Storage Logical Volume Group as a Physical Volume

Please turn your Mac off and replace old Fusion Drive configuration with new Drive that you purchased – then attach recovery media to your Mac and boot with it.

Attach media that holds previously created backup to your Mac and start restore process.

The restore process consists of two phases.

First, you need to recover all data from an existing backup image, except for the Core Storage Logical Group and Volume:

Restart your Mac from HDM for Mac recovery media by holding the Option (alt) key during the system restart until the Startup Manager appears, then select “HDM Recovery” as the boot source.
Choose a backup image to restore, then click Restore Archive.
Select Selective restore.
The wizard displays the contents of the specified backup image. Choose only physical backup objects for restore, while excluding all the rest.
Select a target disk with enough capacity for the restore operation.
Check the resulting disk layout. Make sure the “Restore as is” option is selected.
Confirm the operation, then click Restore to start the task.

Second, you need to recover a Core Storage Logical Volume as a single GPT physical volume:

Choose a backup image to restore, then click Restore Archive.
Select Restore single partition.
The wizard displays the contents of the specified backup image. This time you need to choose only the logical backup objects to be restored, while excluding all the rest.
Select a free block on the target disk you specified during the first phase for the restore operation.
Use the sliders to set a size for the restored partition. (optional)
Check the resulting disk layout. Click Restore to initiate the operation, which may take a while as about 10GB of data is going to be copied, in this example.