The Fusion drive on a Mac consists of two physical drives: an SSD and a standard platter-based drive. It combines the best of both worlds: the blazing-fast performance of an SSD and the large but inexpensive storage of a traditional hard drive.

While the Fusion setup provides a nice performance boost for most Mac users, there may come a time when you no longer want the Fusion drive and would rather have two separate drives for your Mac. You may find that separate drives are a better configuration for your data needs, or you may want to swap out the SSD or hard drive for a larger or faster one. Whatever the reason, it's relatively simple to separate the drives into their individual components.

Disk Utility doesn't fully support Apple's Core Storage technology, the behind-the-scenes system that makes the Fusion drive work. Yes, you can see your Fusion drive in Disk Utility, and you can erase the data on it, but Disk Utility lacks a way to break the Fusion drive down into its basic components. Likewise, there's no way to create a Fusion drive in Disk Utility; instead, you'll need to use Terminal to set up a Fusion drive.

Of course, if you can create a Fusion drive in Terminal, you can also split one. That’s the method we’ll use in this guide to remove a Fusion drive.