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Restore 2012 rMBP SSD to factory speed?

H

Harry322

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 11, 2005
100
20
Los Angeles
Hey guys - I have the "ultimate" configuration of the first-yen Retina MBP (mid 2012). I'm going to be doing a clean install of Mavericks and was wondering how I can restore my SSD to its factory-fresh speed?

I've seen a lot of people talking about using windows to execute a S-ATA format (or some such procedure). I'm not really equipped for that.

Is there a mac-based way of restoring my drive? The equivalent of a "zeroing" to the old spinning disc drives?

Thanks in advance.
 
Harry322 said:
Hey guys - I have the "ultimate" configuration of the first-yen Retina MBP (mid 2012). I'm going to be doing a clean install of Mavericks and was wondering how I can restore my SSD to its factory-fresh speed?

I've seen a lot of people talking about using windows to execute a S-ATA format (or some such procedure). I'm not really equipped for that.

Is there a mac-based way of restoring my drive? The equivalent of a "zeroing" to the old spinning disc drives?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I think you might be talking about ATA secure erase.
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

You can do it from a linux bootable CDROM or bootable USB such as gparted live (free) if you can get it to boot a rMBP. I've used gparted live to boot a 2011 13 inch MBP (non retina). There is also Partition Magic which is linux based and has some nice graphical tool to do the secure erase.

But first of all, why do you want to do this? Have you any evidence that your drive is running slow and that this "restoring" will fix it?

Edit: should mention that there is no guarantee that either of these will boot your machine.
 
Last edited:
Hey Alex -

Thanks for the advice - yes the ATA secure erase was the procedure I was talking about. Still sounds like a somewhat tricky procedure, but I appreciate the info all the same.

There's no real issue with the SSD, this is just another routine reformat of the machine between jobs. Anecdotally, I've noticed that it doesn't seem as speedy or "snappy" as it used to be. I don't have statistics to back this up, but I figured that after two years of heavy use, I should do some sort of special reformat.

Any other ways to restore the factory-fresh performance?

Thanks!
 
Harry322 said:
Hey Alex -

Thanks for the advice - yes the ATA secure erase was the procedure I was talking about. Still sounds like a somewhat tricky procedure, but I appreciate the info all the same.

There's no real issue with the SSD, this is just another routine reformat of the machine between jobs. Anecdotally, I've noticed that it doesn't seem as speedy or "snappy" as it used to be. I don't have statistics to back this up, but I figured that after two years of heavy use, I should do some sort of special reformat.

Any other ways to restore the factory-fresh performance?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

SSD's speeds degrade over time and there is nothing you can do about it. Your erasing and restoring of the drive is simply putting needless cycles one your SSD which will only shorten its lifespan.

Leave it be.
 
snaky69 said:
SSD's speeds degrade over time and there is nothing you can do about it. Your erasing and restoring of the drive is simply putting needless cycles one your SSD which will only shorten its lifespan.

Leave it be.
Click to expand...

Do you have something to back that up? SSD read speeds should remain constant. ATA secure erase will mark cells as empty and negate the need to read/write back whole cells when writing data, restoring the write speed somewhat.
 
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Wow, I've always bought in to the notion that SSDs degrade over time. I thought there would be a way to counteract it, but it sounds like there isn't. Or at least that there's some debate on the issue.

Appreciate the discourse, guys, but I can't help but feel like my SSD isn't as snappy as it used to be....
 
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